


The Man Comes Around

by Neotoma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: sabriel_mini, M/M, bobfic, egg fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel finds God. This doesn't solve the Apocalypse, but does bring Dean and Sam new tools to fight with -- to wit, an entire garrison and their soon-to-hatch eggs and a Word of God, which not even archangels can resist for long. Figuring out how to use these new tools and in what ways is Sam's new problem, and Gabriel isn't exactly helpful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man Comes Around

**Author's Note:**

> This story came out of the season 5 mid-season hiatus, so it breaks off after episode 5.10. Therefore, no Kali, no Chuck=God, and very different characteristics for the Horsemen

His Vessel's soul was stirring, down in the soft warm place he'd placed it for safekeeping. The Father's radiance was wakening even he, who had been asleep so long.

 _Castiel? Cas? Where are we? What have you done?_ the human asked, sleep and confusion still tangling his being.

 _I found Him. I have found Him and we are all right,_ Castiel replied, joy in every word and thought and deed. _Rejoice, Jimmy. We are all saved._

 _Oh god_ , Jimmy thought.

 _Yes_ , _exactly,_ Castiel said. _God._

 

Dean and Sam arrived at Bobby's scrapyard to find the man himself stomping around his own porch in a mood.

"Your angel showed up. He's out in the back."

"Now he's my angel?" Dean objected.

"Yes," Sam snapped. "He's your angel."

"No the hell he's n—"

"'Dean says this', 'Dean says that', 'Dean has the truth of the universe', 'Dean, Dean, Dean.' If I didn't know better, I'd think you were dating a teenage girl, Dean."

Dean glared at his little brother. Sam shot back a bitchface. Dean rolled his eyes and stomped out of his car. It wasn't like that, but Sam was going to be a dick about Castiel, so there was no talking to him about it. You'd think Sam was jealous or something.

Dean sighed, and walked around the house and into the scrapyard. Best to find Castiel immediately and get everything sorted out.

The scrapyard hadn't changed much, still stacks of junked cars in various stages of being scrapped for parts. Bobby would probably have them pulling panels and parts if they stayed more than a few days – he claimed they owed him for the lost time when he was diverted into helping them, and really, they did. 

There was a weird odor as Dean moved through the scrapyard, not oil or rust, but more like a dumpster behind a supermarket, all rotten fruit and moldy bread. He wrinkled his nose against it, but when he turned the last corner, it hit him full in the face.

"Cas, dude, what are you doing?" Dean asked. It looked like the angel was making a hill out of yard waste, but it wasn't like any of them mowed or anything, so what the heck? The heap of rot around the angel's feet smelled of clipped grass, rotten fruit, and other vegetable stink. 

Castiel himself looked up at Dean with those thousand-yard eyes and said, “I’m laying the foundations, Dean. A proper foundation is important when replenishing, for the rootstock gives strength to fruit, as you know."

No, Dean didn't know, because that was cryptic and weird even for Cas.

 

Dean called Chuck, after Sam looked woebegone and pestered him about it. Dean would rather have ignored everything, but heck, their angel buddy was building the biggest pile of crap in the known world in Bobby's scrapyard, and Dean had no clue why. Maybe the twitchy little twerp who moonlighted as a Prophet of the Lord would know.

Except he didn't, and he didn't even sound drunk as an excuse. Dean growled into his phone again.

"It doesn't work like that. I don't get it all in order, one, two, three," Chuck said. "Sometimes, I have a blank space at the beginning and I'll know what goes there when I get farther along in the plot."

"So you don't have any idea what happened to Cas?"

"Just that it was something good. Really… good."

"Great. That's been a lot of help," Dean snapped, and went to close his phone.

"Dean?" Chuck said. "Tell Castiel congratulations from me. For … whatever it is. It's good, I know it is."

"Sure, Chuck, whatever." Dean closed the phone.

"Nothing?" Sam asked.

"Chuck doesn't have a clue what happened. Just that it was 'good'. How the hell can it be good? Cas is acting all crazy!"

 

It only took two more days (and the addition of something that smelled like pig shit – Sam knew the smell of pig shit, because you drive past one hog farm, you've driven past the worst stink in the world, and you'll never ever mistake it) before Dean broke and went for the summoning ritual. Not that they'd seen Anna in months, but she'd helped them before the Devil walked out of Hell. Maybe she'd come if they called her now.

"No luck?"

"No luck. Where the hell is she?" Dean snapped. "We've done everything right. The lines are perfect, the herbs are stinky and burnt, the salt is good. But Anna is a no show."

"Maybe we're not saying the words right. It's not there's a real pronunciation guide to Enochian…"

"Damnit, Sam, I don't know who else to call. Anna's the only one we can contact who might know what's happening with Cas. It's not we can just look up 'angel specialist' in the phone book."

"I know, Dean—"

"—Damnit, I'd even take help from Gabriel right now."

Sam knew that Dean had made a mistake even before he heard from behind them, "You two muttonheads should be more careful who you mention during an Enochian invocation."

"Crap!" Sam whirled to see Dean pulling the Colt on an archangel.

Who frowned as Dean pointed the gun at him, but didn't blanch, disappear, or move back. 

"We're not agreeing, and we're not going with you," Dean snapped, "So don't even start."

Gabriel gave him a nasty, condescending look. "How you going to stop me? I don't see any Holy Oil this time."

That was the wrong thing to say, because Dean would shoot an archangel in the face. And did.

The Colt did knock Gabriel down, that's for sure.

On the other hand, he got up again. _Boy, does he looked pissed_ , Sam thought distantly. Another part of his brain was going, _ohshitohshitohshit_.

"Gimme that."

"Hey!" Dean objected, as the revolver yanked itself out of his hands and into Gabriel's. The archangel stared at the gun in his hands for a moment, if he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Then his face flickered through a cascade of emotions – annoyance, realization, shock, dismay, consideration, and then finally exasperation.

"You really thought this," Gabriel lifted the Colt, "was going to kill me? Numbskull. Did you try it on Lucifer? Not one of us has ever died, moron."

"Angels die all the time. We've seen it!"

"You've seen angels die?"

Sam nodded, because Dean sure as hell wasn't going to talk to the archangel. Argue and insult, sure, but talk? Not a chance. Sam wanted to talk, because the longer Gabriel talked, the longer they had time to come up with a plan to run away from him. "Cas killed two angels when he rescued us from Zachariah."

Gabriel took that, looked away, and sighed, "Oh, kiddo." He focused back on them and said, "Angels, especially grunts like Castiel, are not archangels. Nowhere even near close."

"Shit," Dean looked pissed that he had missed the obvious. "All of you dicks are immune!

"Duh. What did you think he was, a special case?" Gabriel snapped. "We four are all the same, powerful, mighty, and immune to _pop guns_ – you idiot!"

"Okay, so that was an oversight on our part," Sam conceded. They'd been so freaked out by Lucifer's immunity to the Colt that they hadn't paid attention to his words at the time – Lucifer was one of the five things the Colt couldn't kill, and three of the others seem to be the other archangels, given Gabriel's continued obnoxious existence. Sam wondered absently who or what was the fifth thing the Colt couldn't kill – God?

"Ya think?" Gabriel snapped.

"Look, we need help," Sam said, trying to save the situation. He really didn't want to get zapped into TV-land again, or stuck in a time-loop, or whatever bizarre and whimsical torture the archangel could come up with off the top of his head. They didn't have time for it, and Gabriel was too damned inventive. 

"He's not going to help us," Dean grumbled.

"Well, we can't get through to Anna, and Chuck doesn't actually know what's going on with Cas."

That got Gabriel's attention. He straightened up, all his attention suddenly focused on Sam. "What's wrong with Castiel?"

Sam blinked in surprise. Gabriel had whacked Cas around like a tetherball last time they'd encountered the Trickster. Why did he care? _Because Cas is family_ , Sam realized; _Gabriel can beat on him, but no one else can_. Older brothers were the same whether they were human or angel, apparently. 

"He's acting really weird. I'd say he was drugged," Sam explained, "except I didn't think anything human like that could affect angels."

"Seriously, Cas has gone loco. We need help," Dean admitted.

Gabriel gave them an annoyed stare, then rolled his eyes. "All right, where is the munchkin?"

Sam frowned. "You can't tell?" The archangel had always seemed aware of things that a human couldn't possibly observe before. So why couldn't he perceive Castiel now?

"Would I be asking if I could?"

Sam rolled his eyes, and nodded toward where Cas was tending his garbage pile. "He's over there."

The archangel tilted his head and peered in the direction that Sam indicated.

"Hey, is that a nest?"

"What?" 

Gabriel gave Dean an exasperated look, and snapped his fingers. Sam felt the jolt, and found himself looking at a different stack of cars than he had a moment before. Looking around, he came to the conclusion that the archangel had popped them less than a hundred feet across the scrapyard, but much closer to the back where Castiel was doing his thing – whatever his thing actually was.

"Is. That. A. Nest?" Gabriel pointed at the garbage mound. He looked… he looked like someone had hit him with a two-by-four, wide-eyed and confused. Like he couldn't reconcile what he was seeing with what he thought he knew.

Sam wondered if he was going to have to use his 'talking to civilians' skills on an archangel. Right up until Gabriel blinked out again, leaving Sam and Dean behind this time.

Except that he hadn't blinked far, because there he was, falling sideways against one of the junkers, with an even more confused look on his face – and blood.

"What happened?"

"I bounced… I never bounce." Gabriel rubbed at his face, and looked surprised to see blood on his fingers.

"Looks like you hit some Enochian wards, dude," Dean said smugly. He pointed to the dusty marks that seem to have been gouged into the ground and ambled past them. "Cas!" he bellowed as he went.

Sam frowned, and looked down at the ground. Just feet away, about where Gabriel had reappeared and stumbled back, there were glowing geometric shapes in the dust and dirt of the salvage yard. They dwindled in brightness as he watched, fast becoming almost indistinguishable from the ground they were set in, just lines scratched into the soil.

"Huh," Sam said.

 

"Oh. You," Cas said, his voice flat even for him. The angel has just appeared at the inside edge of the wards. He was wearing his 'dealing with problems' face, which wasn't that different from his 'issuing orders' face or his 'taking in the strange human byways' face, actually.

"Castiel?" Gabriel asked, like he wasn't quite sure it was Cas standing there.

"Gabriel," Castiel said. Gabriel bristled up, and Castiel's stare became even flatter than usual. Sam felt his skin break out in goosebumps, and the air smelled heavy, full of anticipation, like just before a thunderstorm broke.

And suddenly it was a slap-fight between angels. Which was ridiculous, since Cas could throw a punch (badly), and Gabriel could do a whole lot more than that, but they were restraining themselves to whacking on each other like kindergartners at recess.

It didn't last long, a scuffle in the dirt that ended with the angels knocking each other into one of the stacks of junked cars. Gabriel had Cas in a choke-hold, pinned across the throat even as he struggled in his brother's arms.

"Wake up. Wake up. Wake. Up," the archangel chanted.

Cas jerked suddenly, arcing and then collapsing in Gabriel's arms. He blinked, and then said, "Oh, god, no," in a smooth, boyish voice.

Not Cas. Not Cas at all – that Jimmy Novak was shivering in terror in the arms of an archangel. Sam recognized the salesman's tenor.

"What the fuck?!" Dean growled. "Hey. Hey! Stop messing with the guy. He's only human!"

Gabriel's head swung around like a raptor's, his eyes as golden as hawk's. "He's a _witness_!" the archangel hissed.

"Stop terrorizing him, you dick!" Dean tried to pull the archangel's hands away.

"Oh god, oh god, he's going to kill me!" Jimmy wailed.

Sam put his own hand in, trying to tug Jimmy's trenchcoat out of Gabriel's fingers even as the archangel argued with Dean behind his back. Not that it was much of an argument, what with them both snarling at each other like... well, junkyard dogs.

"It'll be all right," Sam smiled weakly, and wondered if Castiel could fix the coat if Sam tore it to get Jimmy free. The angel did seem to like it – though if Sam were Jimmy, he'd probably burn everything Castiel had ever worn, especially since the angel hadn't ever changed his clothes as far as Sam could tell. A year trapped in the same suit and hobo trenchcoat, with an angel who couldn't be bothered to figure out how a tie worked would make anyone hate their clothes.

"No," Jimmy moaned, "He's coming up, coming back..." and Sam's skin prickled, as if heated by the sun. Sam saw how Jimmy's face transformed, his fear smoothing away as Castiel climbed up from wherever Gabriel had shoved him.

"Brother," Castiel said, full of reproach, and was suddenly standing an arm's length away from Gabriel. Sam felt unbalanced, and so must have Dean, since his brother caught himself and gave Castiel a weather eye.

Then Gabriel came out with just about the last thing Sam would ever expected him to say:

"Do you have a Word?"

"Go and fetch."

Gabriel looked stubbornly, murderously rebellious. What the hell was Cas doing? Was he trying to get exploded _again_?

"Go," Cas repeated, "and fetch."

"You're pushing things, bro."

"I am doing as I was commanded, brother. You are the one currently in disobedience."

"I never disobeyed Dad," Gabriel said, and his sharp jaw set mulishly.

Sam looked at Dean and raised his eyebrows. His brother made a 'no, I don't understand either' face, and Sam frowned at that. Dean rolled his eyes, glanced at the standoff between Gabriel and Castiel, and manned up.

"Cas," Dean asked, "you found God?"

 

A slap fight between angels, Gabriel showing off some freaky new powers – Dean didn't even know that anyone could talk to a Vessel when the angel was still inside them, freaky! – and then Cas had just pulled out what had to be a bluff – or a hole card. Dean didn't know which he wanted it to be.

Cas on the other hand... looked happy.

The angel reached under his collar to pull out a familiar cord. Cas held up Dean's amulet, and smiled. "I'm sorry I can't give it back to you yet, Dean. It's still too hot for you to touch."

Dean could feel the heat rising from the horned pendant from a yard away. "That's okay, Cas. You keep it for now."

Cas nodded, and slipped the cord back under his shirt, hiding the amulet.

"So… what did dear old Dad have to say?"

Cas's smile turned blissed out, as happy as Sam on a three-day binge. "My Father _loves_ me. And he has work for me to do."

"I've heard that one before," Dean said.

"Oh, Dean," Cas said earnestly – not that he was anything other than earnest, but this was extra-strength earnestness, "You are _all_ so beautiful. We will save the whole world, because the Father said we should."

"Uh, okay, Cas," Dean said. He was not going to freak out, no way, no how. So what if Cas had maybe found God? 

"And you brother," Cas said as he turned to look at Gabriel again, "Go, and _fetch_."

"I heard you the first time," Gabriel snapped.

"But you did not obey..."

Dean had seen Gabriel in many states, amused, bargaining, arrogant, pissed off, and gleefully malicious. Appalled was a new look, and Dean liked it. For a change, they had a leg up on one of the winged dicks; even if it was only Gabriel, it was still satisfying.

"Fine," Gabriel snapped. "I'll go. But I'm going to have to leave my Vessel behind." He shifted to look at Sam and Dean. "Got a tree where I can stash it?"

Sam looked confused and suspicious, and he snapped at the archangel, "A tree?"

"A tree?" Dean repeated. What the fuck was the bastard Trickster on about?

 

"A tree, nimrods. Plant, big, lots of leaves, woody base, slightly smaller than the sasquatch?"

"There is a suitable tree on the eastern edge of Bobby's property," Castiel said.

Gabriel snapped, and they were suddenly under a blighted, twisted tree. Sam recognized it – it was on the back edge of the scrapyard.

"When I leave, don't get near that tree, no matter what happens. No matter _what_."

"Why not?"

"Because, muttonhead, you have to be intact to fight this war. You getting yourself eviscerated and eaten by my Vessel isn't going to do any of us any good."

Gabriel leaned back against the blasted tree, and closed his eyes. Sam watched in fascination as the ash unfolded into green, healthy life under his influence.

A tiny twig of green-gold sprouted right next to the archangel's head, and crept down his to his shoulder like a friendly kitten. Gabriel smiled as it twined over his shoulder and up into his hair. 

Sam almost thought it hilarious that a plant liked Gabriel so much – it really was almost friendly. Until he saw blood bloom on Gabriel's shoulder, rapidly staining his button-down shirt.

"What the hell?!" Sam reached to pull the vine away from where it was growing into the archangel's shoulder, but Gabriel's eyes snapped open and he grabbed Sam's wrists so tight that Sam hissed.

"Don't," Gabriel said, his eyes filling with light. "The mistletoe is going to keep you safe. Run, boys. Run!"

"Sam..." Dean said, and pulled him away, as the archangel began to seep out of his Vessel. They had only seconds to get away, throwing themselves down behind rusted car panels and covering their eyes as light and sound and _heat_ erupted, enough to prickle Sam's skin as he hugged the ground.

Sam shook his head, trying to clear the muffled roar in his head. It didn't help that there was a dull sound that might have been piercing, if his ears were working. If that's what an archangel was like out of their Vessel, no wonder Michael and Lucifer's planned showdown was supposed to be the End of the World. Gabriel just achieving lift-off had felt like an earthquake and a fireworks accident at the same time.

Only the roaring in his ears didn't clear up so much as resolve into furious shrieks straight out of a Tarzan movie, all monkey-calls and lion roars. Sam gave Dean an unhappy look, and then winced.

"This is going to suck..." Dean grumbled, but picked himself off the ground towards the noise. Sam sighed, and followed.

"I think that's the Vessel," Sam said once they found Gabriel's tree again.

"Ya think?"

It still looked like Gabriel, if Gabriel were a shrieking crazy person with eyes of burning orange. Sam had no idea what it actually was, but not remotely human was a good guess. Confirmed when it burst into fire – which was way more vivid than Sam ever wanted to experience, right down to the burnt pork smell – and resolved itself into a black pony, still tethered to the tree by mistletoe grown through its body. The monster shrieked again, and transformed again, and again – cycling from human shape to horse to human and howling all the while.

"Uhm," Sam said.

"Fuck," Dean agreed, and they backed away from the archangel's utterly insane Vessel.

"So," Sam said, "each uisge?"

"Don't those things die when you set them on fire?"

"Usually..."

"So no. What other horse monsters are out there?" Dean asked.

"There are dozens of them."

"All people-eaters?"

"Pretty much," Sam agreed.

"Fucker would have a monster for a pet," Dean grumbled. "I need a beer."

Sam nodded as they trudged back to Bobby's house.

 

"So what is the featherhead doing out in my yard?" Bobby barked just about the second they passed through the door.

"Gabriel said it was a nest."

"A what?!" 

"A nest."

"As in _eggs_? That kind of nest?"

"Yeah," Dean said, and Sam nodded in agreement.

"Angels don't breed," Bobby snapped. There was an unspoken 'idiot' on the end of that, Sam was sure.

"Do we know that for certain?" Sam had to ask. "I mean, demons can – we met a kid who was part demon."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Jesse. What was Cas calling him, a 'cambion'?"

"Yeah, said he was more powerful than all the angels in Heaven..."

"And that's in my scrapyard?!"

 

The problem with Heaven, Gabriel knew, was that the angels didn't deal well with unexpected obstacles. Even he himself, become wise and sly from his Earthly existence, could get stuck if humans didn't bend to his plans.

Michael and his angels, they hadn't faced anything they couldn't power through in millennia – for all that they had been moving humans around like game pieces, they'd forgotten that free will was the Gift of Mankind. Lucifer might be rattling along to his destined end like a mine trolley, but humans didn't have to run on rails if they didn't want to. They could cut their own path.

And, as it happened, angels following human plans could, if not cut their own path, follow that human path to whatever unfathomable end it led.

That was why Gabriel spread his wings for the first time in over a thousand years, and shot through the layers of the worlds between Earth and Heaven. Castiel had found – not Father, Gabriel couldn't risk hoping that it was Father, not after so long and so much silence – but maybe a left-behind Word. It was something to hold onto, something to tell them what to do, instead of foundering with prophecies that were worn old and thin as rags.

A Word would be enough to move the world or to save it.

 

 _Brother, brother, brother_ , the voices murmured.

 _Sister. I am your sister_ , Anna replied again. She was 'sister', she remembered being a woman. She would always be a woman. She had chosen to be a woman.

 _Brother, why do you struggle? Why do you hurt? Submit and be happy. Submit and be cleansed_ , they murmured in distress.

 _Sister_ , she said. _I am Anna, your sister._

 _You are Haniel, brother and beloved_ , they countered.

 _No, I am Anna. I choose to be Anna._ She just didn't know how longer she could keep choosing. Even now, she didn't remember much of Anna. The scratch of cotton sheets, the taste of peanut butter, the scent of human flesh pressed close in her arms. It might be easier to be Haniel, perfect and inhuman.

Suddenly, there was a fissure, a smell of rain, startling earthy and imperfect in the perfection of the City, in the perfection of this room without doors or walls. It loomed, the wet scent of air before a thunderhead broke, and it crackled as it surveyed her imprisonment.

 _You_ , the great presence said to some of her tormentors, _leave. You,_ it said to others _, stay._ And to her it said, _Haniel of the 14_ _th_ _Garrison, come._

 _I am Anna_ , she said.

 _So you are, pumpkin,_ it said. _Wanna blow this taco stand?_

The flippancy surprised her into a startled laugh, breaking like the feel of snowflakes out of her being. _Yes. Thank you, brother_. Anna smiled in the way of her kind, her form shimmering into brighter happiness.

_Don't thank me yet. We still have to make a run on the Death Star._

Anna laughed again, delighted. She couldn't imagine how one of the greater angels, one of the Most High, knew something so ridiculously human. She would have to ask, when they had a less desperate moment.

 _I can bull’s-eye a womp rat if I have to,_ she told it.

 _Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I don't think I could play Han Solo – I'm lacking a Wookiee sidekick, for one. Though I suppose Winchester Number Two would do in a pinch...he's tall enough, and shaggy. Come on, kids_ , the presence turned to the few angels who it had ordered to stay. _You want to miss out on your garrison's replenishment?_

They twisted in startled flashes. _Brother, a nest? A nest for us? After so long?_

_Yeah. You have your idiot brother to thank. He found a Word._

_Joy! Joy!_ they sang, O _ur Father looks down on us with favor! We shall not be gone, we shall not be lost, we shall live to serve again._

Anna turned to the angels. She knew them all, survivors of her garrison, her shattered, beloved garrison – they were so few. _Come_ , she sang, _and see._

And they went, Anna, the great presence, and the handful of her garrison. The great presence blew through the paths of the City like a storm front, massive and unopposable, and Anna and her garrison followed in its wake.

 _Gabriel?_ she asked in confusion. After they winged through the Great Gates and out into imperfect realms she recognized the vast intelligence she flew beside. Even though he had been well known by every angel in existence, she hadn't known him until the moment they were free of the City. It was worrisome, for he was grand, and beautiful, and one of the Four – Gabriel, the Herald, the Trumpeter, the Strength of God.

_Took you long enough, munchkin._

_You look… different?_

_Do I?_

_Or maybe I perceive you differently_ , she said, uncertain.

 _It's been a long time, kiddo_ , the archangel said. _We are all different._

_But we shall all be saved._

_Here's to hoping_ , Gabriel said, and banked towards the Earthly realm. _Watch your steps, kids. The first one's a doozie!_

 

One minute they're trying to explain to Bobby what's happening with Cas even though they aren't quite sure themselves, the next Dean is jumping because an former one-night stand-this-could-be-the-end-of-the-line girl has just teleported herself into Bobby's kitchen.

Anna looked out of breath, frazzled, and more than a little haggard. Dean didn't trust the wild look in her eyes one little bit, and wanted to shove Sam and Bobby behind him as the red-headed angel scoped out the room.

"Anna," Cas said, his voice soft and maybe even happy.

Anna jumped and whirled at his voice. Dean watched her back stiffen, and couldn't help but wince when Cas stepped towards her, hope in his eyes, and Anna punched him right in the mouth.

Cas fell over, and looked up at Anna in confusion, like he couldn't imagine why Anna had clocked him.

"You idiot!" she howled, "Castiel, how could you go along with that plan?!"

Cas looked down for a second, then looked up at Anna with big cow eyes, "Zachariah convinced me that it was necessary. That we would have Paradise afterward. I just wanted that forgiveness, that peace, for Dean …

"I was wrong. Dean convinced me I was wrong."

Dean winced. He knew he was the reason Cas had rebelled, but to hear it so nakedly made him want to squirm.

"Oh!"Anna looked up and yelped, interrupting what Sam had hoped would be a coherent explanation for all the angelic weirdness, "Shit."

Cas's eyes flicked around, and then he too was staring up at nothing in particular. "Oh," he said, "that is not good."

"Cover your eyes! Cover your eyes!"

"What? Why?" Dean said.

Whatever the angels had sensed was suddenly _there_ , heat and choking steam and a heavy odor of incense. Sam saw Castiel grab Dean and bear him to the ground before Anna's small hands came up to cover his own eyes. Sam wanted to argue for a moment – if he was supposed to be Lucifer's Vessel, he should be able to see angels with no problem – but the air itself was vibrating, thick and thin and thick again, like fireworks and a steam bath all at once. Maybe Anna's caution wasn't overkill – but Sam really disliked being held down in the muck of the scrapyard.

When Anna let Sam up and took her hands off his eyes, the first thing he noticed was Gabriel smirking behind her and making a show of dusting off his clothes. He even picked bits of mistletoe out of his hair.

Anna climbed to her feet and stared at the archangel. "What are you wearing?"

Gabriel smirked. "Nice, isn't it? No one would look for me in here."

Anna's face made it clear to Sam that no angel would have looked for Gabriel in whatever his Vessel was because he was clearly insane to be inhabiting it. 

"You are impossible..." Anna said.

"You're the one rebelling against Heaven, kiddo."

Anna opened her mouth to say something, then got a funny look on her face. She turned around, until she was looking right in the direction of Cas' garbage mound. "Hey," Anna asked, "is that a nest?"

"No," Dean said just as Cas said, "Yes."

Anna whipped round to stare at Cas in complete shock, and then she lunged for him. 

Dean grabbed after her, but she'd already slammed into Cas with a squeal – loud and piercing and leaking her angelic nature enough that it hurt Dean's ears. The way Sam was wincing, it hurt him too. Gabriel was just rolling his eyes, like Anna's squealing attack on Cas was just too undignified for the archangel.

Considering Anna was kissing Castiel like she was giving him a physical with her tongue, maybe Gabriel was right.

She broke off, just before Dean decided it was time to try and pry her off Cas – didn't she know he was a virgin? You didn't mack on a virgin like that, it just wasn't right. "We are blessed," she said, and smiled at Cas.

"We are," Cas agreed.

"Hey, before this turns into a lovefest—" Dean started, and then yelped, because that whooshing, whoozy feeling was Air Angel. "Don't fly me without warning."

"Sorry," Anna said, not sounding at all contrite. She walked past Dean, and then Sam, heading towards Cas' garbage pile. "...a nest. Finally, a nest."

"So," Sam said, with his captain empathy voice that was so good at getting information out of emotional civilians, "a nest, Cas? That's... good?"

"Yes, Sam," Cas replied, with a freakishly wide grin (for him) on his face.

Dean decided to call it good, and go look with Cas as the angel made to follow his sister.

"Are you coming?" he heard Sam ask behind him, and rolled his eyes. Of course, Sammy would try to make friends with the archangel of assholery. Just what they needed.

 

Two hours later, there was only a little bit more of an explanation, and suddenly a bunch more angels at Singer Salvage.

"Dean, Sam."

"Aren't you going to introduce your friends?"

"They're not my friends. They're my garrison." Anna sighed, and looked at the six angels that were clumped together, looking as worried as angels could manage, which meant they were all frowning slightly, mostly around the eyes.

"This is Noadiah," a bony guy in a suit, almost as tall as Sam, "Naya'il," an older black guy, with a neat beard and a better suit – he looked like he'd wandered away from his pulpit, or maybe his blues band, "Lailah," a woman, shorter than Anna, with dark, loose curls, "Joelle," an Asian woman in a nice dress and impractical shoes, "and Achaziah," a thin black woman, with a narrow, clever face, wearing a white dress and shawl. 

She turned to the last angel, whose Vessel looked all of thirteen, "And this is Ridwan, who is not of my garrison." Anna frowned. "She's not even of our order ... why did you follow us, Sister?"

"My chieftain appears in the Silver City in the first time in millennia, and sings that there is a nest among the daughters of Eve —how could I _not_ follow?"

Gabriel winced. "Ridwan, we've gotta talk," he said, and made 'come here' motions.

The tween angel blinked over in front of him, and said, "I've missed you, brother." Her young face peered up at him, like he was the source of all chocolate, or maybe like he'd promised her backstage passes to some emo boyband concert.

"So, are you going to explain now?" Dean asked.

"It is simple," Castiel said. "I found God. I have a Word," and then Cas said _something,_ Enochian maybe, that made everything, including the inside of Dean's head, shimmer and blink.

"Sonofabitch!" Dean yelled.

"Owww..." Sam had the heel of one hand pressed over his eyes. "Little warning next time, Cas?"

The angels, of course, were clustering close around Cas and cooing. "A nest, brother! A nest!"

Dean rubbed his forehead, and asked, "If you got a nest, does that mean there are eggs too, or are we waiting on that?"

One short bark of laughter from Gabriel had him and Sam swinging around to glare at the archangel. "What," he asked, gesturing to Cas, Anna and their loopy friends," do you think the kids are here for, Deano?"

 

"So... angels lay eggs."

"Yeah. Good to know..." Dean said. Sam thought he sounded like his brain was still trying to compute 'angel + angel + nest = egg'. The gears just weren't meshing in his brother's head. Or maybe it was the fact that angels seemed to be communal nesters, and were apparently planning on making a lot of eggs for the nest out back. A lot. Very many. So very many. And were guarding them like a pack of broody alligators.

Okay, maybe Sam still hadn't caught up to the ideas of angels laying eggs. But he had one question running through his head, and it was getting harder and harder not ask it.

"Dean, did you sex up an **ANGEL**?!" 

" **NO**! no! No! .. Okay, maybe."

Sam frowned at his brother.

Dean scrunched his shoulders, and growled. "She was still human then..."

Sam felt his eyebrows rise. That … hadn't actually been what he'd been asking about. He knew about Anna and the time before she'd gotten her Grace back. He'd been think about more recently, and another angel entirely. 

"...The rest of it," Dean was still going on, "it doesn't count if it was a dream..."

There was a bark of laughter from one of the junkers. Gabriel. Of course. The archangel didn't seem interested in doing anything more than hanging around and making snarky comments, which was a considerable improvement from what he'd been up to the last time they met, but still a lot less than helpful as far as Sam could see. "That's what YOU think," Gabriel chortled, and leaned back, drumming his feet on the hood of the car he was sitting on.

"What?!"

Sam frowned at the archangel, and said, "Why do dreams count?"

"Because you monkeys have really poor locks on your minds, especially when you're dreaming. Any idiot can waltz on in and walk away with the goods – in this case, part of Dean's soul."

"Part of my _soul..._ " Dean said.

"A little part. You'd never notice it's gone."

"It's part of my soul! How would I not notice!"

Gabriel made a face, all twisted lips and thinky frown for a moment. "Maybe you're not very observant?"

"Hey!" Dean protested.

 

Sam almost got used to Gabriel sitting like a guard dog outside the nest boundary after a few days. The quick-change into new bodies, however, was kind of freaky, and Sam wished he wouldn't do it. It was fake and showy and fake. He'd been someone else almost every time Sam had come around – tall and broodingly handsome, short and plump and stacked, brown haired, black haired, auburn, even bald once, skin and facial features shifting through every ethnicity on the planet – but always facing towards Castiel's nest like a pointer.

"So, who are you pretending to be today?"

Gabriel looked up with the most innocent expression possible. Sam found it completely off-putting, because he knew what Gabriel really looked like, and an innocent wide-eyed girl just wasn't it – the fakery was galling. 

Gabriel eventually sighed, and rolled pretty, black eyes in a gesture that was entirely him, even if he was currently dressed and shaped like a high school cheerleader. He even had pom-poms to go with the short flippy skirt.

"Her name was Artastuna – I met her in Persia a long time ago."

"A Vessel?"

Gabriel snorted, "No, not for me. Just someone who was kind, and you know, attractive the way you humans reckon things."

"This is really not the way to get into my good graces. Be yourself"

Gabriel rolled his eyes again, and heat-shimmered back into his usual sharp-faced, male form. "I thought you'd like it – humans are more likely to talk if you're female. Especially female and attractive."

"That's what you think?"

"That's what I've seen. Female bodies get confided in, male ones get obeyed."

Sam thought that might explain why most of the angels he and Dean had met were using men as Vessels, even though half of humanity was female – though the idea of angels trying to use human psychology against them was bizarre.

 

Since Cas' garrison was going to be on their side of this thing (fight off Heaven and Hell, trying to avert the Apocalypse, whatever you wanted to call it), Dean wanted them to be good at it. Angels tended to stomp in and try to smite their way through, and since their power to destroy demons ended at their fingertips, Dean wanted them to know how to deal with monsters before they got within swiping distance. So, lessons... or at least, he tried to give them lessons after a few days of letting them walk around blissed out of their celestial minds. He could have ignored them if they just kept their hands to themselves, but no, nesting angels were huggers. 

Half a dozen distracted angels gathered around him might have been a mistake too. They sure as hell didn't seem to be elite warriors of God right at the moment. Stoned hippies of God, maybe...

"Do any of you even know how to shoot a gun?" Dean asked.

A round of blank looks, and one, "Sure."

Oh, Gabriel. Of course.

"Yeah, what gun?"

"M-1 Carbine."

Dean paused. Did he even want to know how an archangel knew how to use a military rifle from World War Two? No, he did not.

"And the Baker rifle, but if we're down to using that, we're screwed," the archangel added. The garrison all turned to stare at him, and Anna rolled her eyes.

Dean leaned over to whisper to Sam, "What the hell is a Baker?" He didn't recognize the name at all, and he thought he had at least seen all the firearms a hunter might use.

"It's a muzzle-loader from the Napoleonic Wars."

"Right..." So Gabriel was either shitting with them or he'd been monkeying with soldiers at least twice in the past. Or both, because you couldn't put any kind of mischief past the archangel.

The rest of the lesson kind of limped along – Dean didn't quite give up in frustration, but he was frazzled by the end of it.

"Dean," Cas said just as he threw in the towel and went to get himself a beer, "they will learn this. I promise."

 

"Why is Gabriel still here? He must know he's not welcome. None of you even talk to him, except Ridwan but I think she feels sorry for him..." Sam asked, looking out the back window. The archangel was sitting on the roof a totaled sedan, his head tipped up towards the sky.

Anna looked up from her tea – she said she still liked consuming it, even if she didn't need sustenance anymore – and looked sideways at Castiel. 

"I do not know for certain, but I believe it is the nest," Cas said.

Sam turned to look at the angels, a question on his face.

Anna nodded. "He can't leave. It's like … a default order. Nests have to be protected."

"You said he wasn't part of the garrison?"

"He's an archangel, Sam. They've never been part of the garrisons. But that doesn't mean they can't get caught up in our … 'instincts', for lack of a better word. We angels, we're not like you. You humans can overcome your urges so easily. It's so hard for us."

"Who cares?" Dean said, "As long as he's out there and not causing trouble, we can ignore the fucker."

"You shouldn't. The hierarchy may be in disarray, and Heaven grinding down like a neglected engine but he _is_ an archangel."

"Heaven's... breaking down?" Dean asked. Sam agreed with the appalled tone in his brother's voice. The Apocalypse might be the stupidest, nastiest, more self-centered thing the angels could conceive of, but that didn't necessarily mean there was something wrong with the afterlife itself, did it?

"God is silent, Dean," Anna said. "With no Word, no help, what can Heaven do but come apart..?"

"God helped me," Castiel said.

"Helped you become weirder," Dean muttered.

"Well, you do have Words," Anna admitted. "But they haven't stopped they Apocalypse, have they?"

Sam sighed, "We're going to have to finish this ourselves, then, right? No help from God, no archangels to rescue us, just me and Dean and your garrison?"

"The archangels _are_ broken," Anna said. "I doubt they could pull themselves off the path they're on even with Castiel's Words." 

"They're broken?"

"Raphael and Michael have given in to despair – they want only an ending."

"And Lucifer is a sociopath," Sam agreed.

"Fallen," Castiel corrected softly.

"So what, Gabriel is the well-adjusted one?" Dean asked sarcastically.

Cas and Anna looked at each other.

"Comparatively, yes."

"You're joking."

"Anna," Sam said, "Gabriel's like, what, a manic-depressive or something?"

Anna thought for a moment. "In a crude analogy, that works. You could say he was bipolar."

"And obsessed with frivolity," Cas added with quiet acid.

Anna's mouth twitched up for a second. "He's been drowning himself in despair and hedonism for centuries."

 

When Sam went out the next day to check on the angels and their nest, Ridwan was sitting on the car hood next to Gabriel, playing something that was not really a guitar – a lute, maybe, with a fat body and a fretless neck. The archangel himself was singing in a crooning, croaking voice, scratchy and oddly charming. Sam was suddenly reminded that even crows and ravens were songbirds.

"You sing."

"I'm an angel, Sam. Of course I sing." Gabriel looked ruffled, like he was embarrassed to be caught singing for the sheer pleasure of it.

Ridwan laughed, bright and tinkling. "You're just rusty, brother. You should sing more. It was pleasant."

Sam gave her a look, but she smiled innocently, and since her Vessel was barely a teenager, if that, she carried it off better than any of the other angels had ever managed.

"Scram, kiddo. I think the moose-squatch wants to talk to me."

Ridwan gave Sam an evaluating, sideways look, and then giggled. She patted Gabriel's hand, and hopped off the car. "I will be with the youngsters, brother," she said as she picked up her instrument and walked towards the nest.

"Okay, how come she gets to go into the nest and you don't?"

"She's a cherub. I'm an archangel."

"Doesn't that mean you outrank them? Can't you order them to let you into the nest?"

Gabriel blinked, and said, "No."

"… But you're an archangel."

"I can't enter the nest."

"You could if you— wait, you can't, can you?" Sam asked. "Not just physically because the others have warded it. You can't … because something is making you not want to go in? A fear-creating ward."

Gabriel rolled his eyes.

"That's a no."

"A 'fear-creating ward', really, Sam?"

"Hey, it was a plausible idea – a Word! You can't go in because of a Word! That's it! Wait, why would God keep you out of a nest?"

"I don't know, Sam, why would you keep your self-aware nuclear weapons from making more of themselves?" Gabriel snapped

Sam stared at the archangel. "What?"

"You think Dad wanted more archangels than he already had? Only four of us, and Lucifer went off the rails!"

"Oh." Sam frowned. "Still, that doesn't seem fair, making it so you can't have kids..."

Gabriel flopped back on against the cracked windshield, in complete defiance of its fragility, and sighed. "It's not like the eggs are going to be babies. Angels don't go through a life-cycle. One moment we're just potential, then _poof_ , we exist. Same thing in reverse when we die – existence, then _poof_." Gabriel made little throw-away gestures, like fireworks spring to life and then fizzling. "It's only humans who go on after death. The benefits of having a soul..."

"You don't have souls?" Sam leaned against the car, and felt something building in him, something cold and deep. "I thought angels would just be soul all the way through..."

"Nope. Souls are for humans, and humans alone. We've got Grace, which isn't nearly the same thing. Souls are better. Warm," Gabriel said, in a longing voice, "nice to curl up to, in a Vessel or in Heaven. I miss souls..."

"What you're in," Sam gestured, indicating Gabriel's body. It certainly looked human at the moment, but Sam could remember burning orange eyes and equine shrieking, "it doesn't have a soul, does it?"

"You know what I did, Sam?" Gabriel laughed, brittle and sour, "I stole one of the black horses, because it was sturdy enough to bear me, and none of my brothers would ever look for me in something that didn't have a soul."

"The black horses?" Sam asked. There were a lot of horse monsters in myths – kelpie, nuckelavee, glashtyn, bækhesten, tikbalang, each-uisge, were just the ones he could name from memory – but Sam hadn't found any that set themselves on fire. And he'd looked

"'A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!'" Gabriel intoned. He laughed again, bleakly. "I was a complete shit to do that. Steal from one of the Horsemen, and you're just asking to get smote."

"Oh..." Sam didn't know what to say to that. He shifted uncomfortably and was completely disturbed at the idea that Gabriel had stolen from one of the Horsemen for his Vessel. What did you say in the face of that, really? 'Are you fucking insane?!' wasn't helpful, because Gabriel arguably _was._

A burst of staticky shrill whine came from the nest area, and Sam heard Dean bellowing through it.

"Shit!"

 

"Come on!" Dean yelled. 

Their least favorite person in the entire world, besides Lucifer himself – Zachariah, and his goon squad. At least they hadn't gotten past the sigil line, but Cas and Anna had their blades out, stiff and waiting for someone to move wrong. The rest of the garrison was behind them, agitated as hens with a fox in sight.

"Now, now, we've all had our differences, but you don't want to be disobedient, do you?" the smarmy bastard purred.

To Dean's dismay, the angels of Castiel's garrison were shooting each other desperate looks and all but shuffling their feet. They were going to cave in the face of Zachariah's greater authority.

"They're following orders. _My_ orders."

Zachariah whirled as Gabriel came stomping up from behind him, shoulders back and jaw tight as he moved, like he could batter down obstacles with his glare.

"Gabriel!" Zachariah yelped.

"That's me," Gabriel said. "Messenger, and _taxiarch_." He reached out his hand, lightening fast, and tapped the other angel on the head.

Dean threw up his arms to shield his eyes as Gabriel's strike spat a bolt of light forward from Zachariah into the garrison's nest. Another bolt arced upwards like a Roman candle going off. 

When Dean risked the blinding light Zachariah was on the ground, and the sleazy bastard was looking up with a shocked look on his face that would have been delicious if he hadn't been weeping – _weeping_ , of all things – too.

Gabriel was glowing like a torch, wings mantling above his head like a hawk's as he stood in front of the guy. His wings were eerie blue-white and liquid, white-tipped like ocean waves – all six of them. He looked like a fricking icon, winged and shining, armed and armored in a coat of scale.

"Gerald," the archangel said, his hand out to the man crouched on the ground, "you have been a good and faithful servant. Go in peace, for you have loved and served the Lord." 

With a touch of fingers, Zachariah's Vessel was gone, along with the eerie lightshow.

Dean breathed out in relief, and then yelled, "Fuck!" when Gabriel fell over like he'd been shot.

"Ow," the archangel said. He sounded almost... confused.

They rushed towards him, but were suddenly behind a small mob as the garrison crossed the sigil line, and flocked around Gabriel. Fortunately, all the angels were shorter than the brothers, except for Noadiah, and they were able to shoulder in.

"What was that?" Anna was growling as she pulled open Gabriel's scale and leather coat enough to press her hand to his chest. "What were you thinking?"

"I'm an archangel, Haniel." Gabriel sighed, and tried to bat away her hands.

"Against a Hashmal powered up by score of lesser angels. Even you could have been torn to pieces!"

Gabriel made a painful noise through his nose.

"Holy water," Anna demanded, her hand out. Dean gave her his flask – holy water would help angels? Why hadn't Cas told him sometime? That would have saved Dean a lot of worry more than once.

He was startled when she dumped it over Gabriel's head.

"What?!"

But the archangel jerked, and suddenly looked better. And noticeably not wet. Angels were cheaters, obviously. Well, it was Gabriel; cheating and lying were par for the course.

"Get more," Anna barked, looking up at the surrounding angels. Lailah, Ridwan, and Joelle blinked out in a rustle of feathers.

"What's wrong with him?" Sam crouched down to ask.

"I'm fine," Gabriel muttered, but didn't get up.

"He overdid it. For someone who has been _hiding_ under a barrel for the last millennium, that was shining pretty bright."

"I'm fine," Gabriel repeated.

"Only if you can stand on your own," Anna snapped.

Gabriel looked up, his eyes rolling as he considered how far away the sky was from where he was sprawled, and then asked, "Can I have more water?"

"It's coming."

Anna and Cas dragged him over to lean against one of the junkers – not one inside the sigil line, but just outside of it. Maybe Anna was feeling more charitable towards the enormous archangel jerk, to let him get so close to the nest; he _had_ just saved her garrison from Zachariah's goon squad.

"Hey, are you going to be all right?" Sam asked, leaning down like he was going to check Gabriel for cuts and bruises. Heck, Sam was even trying to undo more of the straps holding the archangel's scale coat closed.

"I'm fine."

Anna rolled her eyes, and let go of Gabriel's arm where she'd been holding him. He fell right over, only escaping a beautiful pratfall because Sam was right there to catch him.

"No," Anna said, "you're not."

Gabriel grunted, but didn't fight when Sam heaved him up onto the hood of the junker.

Suddenly, Joelle was back. She handed a silver chalice to Anna, who took it and tossed its contents in Gabriel's face.

Again, the archangel didn't get wet.

"Get more," Anna said, and Joelle took the cup and disappeared.

Sam was frowning with his 'I want to help, but I don't understand' look. Dean needed to nip that in the bud now, or his brother would do something stupid, like offering to do whatever the archangel wanted without considering how Gabriel would just run wild with an open line like that.

"Anna, what the hell?"

"Dean, I—" she broke off as Ridwan and Lailah appeared, each with a container full of holy water. Ridwan's was a Mickey Mouse sippy cup, of all things.

"What the fuck is wrong with him?"

"I pulled a muscle," Gabriel grumbled.

"What?"

"It's a metaphor. He used more power right now than he's probably used in centuries, and he wasn't prepared. Zachariah wasn't an archangel, Dean, but he wasn't far down the hierarchy either," Anna explained, even as kept throwing water over Gabriel. "And the nest is sucking in any stray Grace—"

"Wait, Gabriel said – should we move him?" Sam asked, looking in concern at the nearby line of wards.

Anna frowned for a moment, then nodded. "Yes. He's not part of the garrison, he can't be, the nest is probably taking energy from him, and that's not good for him _or_ it."

 

Sam and Dean dragged the archangel back to Bobby's house and dropped him into a kitchen chair. Cas and Anna followed, after a brief consult with the garrison. Sam noticed the angels scattering to around the perimeter, except for Ridwan, who took up a position outside the sigil line, an angel sword bare in her small hand.

"So what was that?" Dean snapped and began to pace. "Our cover is blown, right? Heaven knows where we are."

Anna and Cas looked at each other awkwardly before looking at Dean.

"Oh please, if Heaven didn't at least have eyes on this place, they've gotten a lot stupider since I left," Gabriel said.

"But why would a watcher not have reported—" Cas frowned.

Anna gasped, and then smiled "The nest? You think they didn't report because of the nest?"

"That would seem logical," Cas said.

"Really?" Sam asked, as he sat down on the corner from Gabriel. The adrenaline was wearing off, and his knees felt shaky. Did angels have such pre-programmed behavior about nests that they'd disobey orders just to guard one? That seemed... risky.

"Whoa whoa whoa! What are we going to do now?" Dean barked.

Anna turned to Cas. "We need orders, plans for what do."

"Yes, the nest comes first..."

Dean rolled his eyes, and said, "How about we plan how to stop the Apocalypse, and stop these jokers cold?"

"Well," Gabriel drawled, "we could always kill Sam and scatter his molecules across the universe. That'd stop Lucifer."

"That could work..." Anna said.

"No! Nobody kills Sam!" Dean shouted.

Sam squirmed where he stood. He didn't like the idea in the slightest, but the thought of being irretrievably dead instead of in Lucifer's clutches was a kind of grim good. He didn't want to be any more responsible for the end of the world than he already was. 

"I’m an archangel. I’ll do what I must.”

"Your 'must’ better include not touching a hair on Sam’s head, Gabriel, or I’ll make you regret it."

Gabriel glanced sideways at his siblings, and then lifted a hand. 

As Dean straightened up to try looming over Gabriel (not that that had ever worked), Sam felt a tap on his head.

"Poke," the archangel said, and lifted his chin at Dean’s glower.

"Gabriel," Cas said.

"Cool your jets, little brother. It’s just me and the Neanderthal, playing 'whose dick is bigger?’"

"Yours is,” Cas said, after a quick glance between the two of them. "Why is that even relevant?"

Gabriel barked with laughter. Dean went bloodless for a moment, then sputtered and flushed and stomped his feet. "Cas!"

"Your genitalia is of entirely adequate size, Dean. But Gabriel’s is larger."

"Oh, Castiel," Anna said through the fingers she pressed to her mouth to keep from grinning. 

Sam just sank down further into his chair and tried to pretend that he didn’t know anything about a dick-measuring contest in which Castiel had been the judge.

Abruptly, Anna stopped smiling. Both she and Cas stiffened, and turned to look at the wall.

"The nest," Cas whispered, and blinked out. Anna was gone as well. Gabriel frowned after them for a moment, and then he was gone too.

"That can't be good," Sam said and rolled his shoulders before lumbering to his feet.

"I know," Dean grabbed the Colt, picked up the container of Holy Oil, and tossed Sam the knife. "Come on."

Anything that could make the angels blink out must be serious, and after Zachariah's appearance, it was better to be loaded for bear.

 

When they got there, and Na'yail and Ridwan had two angels corralled against the junkers, looking furious and hissing like gators.

Gabriel was standing over a tiny woman, his foot pinning her down in the dirt, and there was a naked blade in his hand.

"Haniel? Haniel! I plead for protection, sister!"

Anna glared at the small angel that Gabriel was still pinning to the ground. "Ioliel, why aren't you with your garrison?"

"This," the angel sobbed, "this _is_ my garrison."

Sam looked around, but it was just Ioliel, and the other two? Surely a garrison was bigger... unless they'd been wiped out in the fighting. From the appalled grimace Anna made, Sam was pretty sure that was the implication, and worse.

"Dude, this is not good..." Dean murmured.

"Yeah, tell me—"

"Dean," Cas said, suddenly at their elbows in that way he had. "We need Ioliel."

"I'm not saying throw her out, Cas." 

"We need Ioliel secured," Cas said. Sam frowned, because Castiel was emphasizing the words in ways that made it sound like neither he nor Dean was actually hearing what Cas was saying. It would help if Cas would explain, but he never did unless they dragged it out of him. Sam didn't think they had time for that.

"Dude, I said—"

"Dean," Anna broke in. "You need to take our oaths."

"What now?" Dean asked, his eyebrows rising. Sam shrugged. He didn't know either.

 

"I, Haniel, ish and commander of the Fourteenth Garrison," Anna said, her small hand warm under Dean's as she gripped her sword tight, "promise on my name and the name of the Lord Most High, that I will in the future be faithful to Dean Winchester, never cause him harm, and will obey him in the service of the Lord completely, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit."

The rest of the garrison lined up, Noadiah to Joelle, and then Ioliel and her two, with Castiel last. Dean felt awkward letting the angels kneel to him, but he let them repeat Anna’s oath, feeling more antsy with each repetition, but when Cas came forward and began to kneel, he had to speak up for his friend.

"You don't have to do this, Cas." Dean said.

"Of course I do, Dean," Cas said, and smiled so mild and sweet as he knelt down to take Dean's hand and offer up his silver blade.

Dean gulped.

"I, Castiel," he began, and then it got seriously off-track as Cas substituted his own words or something – Dean had no idea, "once ish of the Fourteenth Garrison, now cherub of Earth and her dominions, promise on my name and the name of my Father, that I will in the future be faithful to Dean Winchester, never cause him harm unless he really needs his ass kicked, and I will obey him in the service of the Lord unless he's being egregiously foolish, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit."

Dean stared at Cas as he rose to his feet. "Are you allowed to change the words like that?

"You did," Cas said, and kissed his cheek before he stepped away.

Gabriel was fidgeting on the sidelines, which was weird. He’d been eerily quiet during the whole parade, visibly unhappy but not interfering. Dean didn’t know what the heck was going through what passed for the archangel’s mind.

When the archangel stomped up to him, frowned at him, and then nodded, Dean braced himself for an attack, verbal if not one of the deadly Trickster-ish pranks. Which was why when Gabriel pulled his sword out of nowhere and slid to his knees with all the fluid grace of a dancer, he recoiled

Gabriel's sword was the same short blade as the other angels had presented, but he held a clay cup in his other hand. Dean took his sword hand, as he had Anna and Cas and all the others.

"The cup too," Gabriel growled.

Dean did not want to touch the little curve of earthware. Just standing there as Gabriel held it up, it vibrated with power. But the archangel was glaring at him with a Do-this-or-be-smote frown, so he wrapped his hand over Gabriel's fingers.

It was like touching an electrical socket, and he could see Gabriel's freaky layered wings again, blue-white and flowing like water.

"I, Gabriel, Seraph of Mercy, of Judgment, of Water and the Word, promise on my name and the name of my Father the Lord Most High, that I will in the future be faithful to Dean Winchester, never cause him harm, and will obey him in the service of the Lord completely, against all persons, in good faith and without deceit."

 

Sam almost swallowed his tongue when Gabriel knelt to Dean for the oath. What the hell? Seriously, what the hell? Gabriel was an _archangel_. And then he pulled out that clay beaker...

Beside him, Anna whispered. "Michael has the Sword. Gabriel has the Cup. Raphael the Staff. The Seal of Heaven and Earth is lost to us."

The Cup? Sam wondered, and then his brain fell sideways. "The _CUP_? Seriously?"

"As it manifests on this plane," Castiel murmured. "In some aspects, Gabriel _is_ the Cup; his element is Water, after all."

Suddenly, what Dean was about to do was too big, too final. Sam yelled his brother's name and stepped forward.

 

"Dean!" 

Dean snapped his mouth shut, leaving Gabriel's oath unaccepted and looked up to see Sam running over.

"What?! I'm busy here, Sammy."

"Hold on for a second, Gabe," Sam blurted, and pulled Dean away from the archangel a little to whisper, "Dean, he's an archangel. We don't want to bind his hands."

"Are you insane?" Dean snapped back. "That's why we want to bind his hands! Or are you forgetting that he thinks killing _you_ would solve everything."

"You're the one who asked him for options," Sam hissed back.

Dean suddenly realized that not only did they have an audience, but they had an intent audience. The angels were still gathered around, staring at them with cocked heads and interested eyes. 

"Don't mind me. I'll just wait here," Gabriel smirked, and held his sword casually across his knees as he knelt in the dust. He cradled the clay cup to his chest with his other hand, though, and even from yards away Dean could feel the power thrumming through the humble little vessel.

"You have to swear to protect and obey Sam too."

"DEAN!"

Dean rolled his eyes at Sam, and looked back at the kneeling archangel.

Gabriel rolled his eyes himself – great, two drama queens who didn't trust Dean's judgment – then snatched Dean's hand back to finish his oath. 

"Yes, I promise, I'll protect and obey Sam."

"Okay. That's settled then," Dean mumbled, and tried to take back his hand.

The archangel chuckled briefly and held firm, bringing Dean's hand to his mouth to kiss.

"Dude..." Dean began, and then yelped in disgust. "Dude! No licking!"

Gabriel grinned and jumped to his feet. "Awww, don't you love me, Deano?"

"NO!"

 

The day after the oath ceremony, Dean was halfway through his lunch of beer and roast beef sandwiches when the house rumbled like a freight train was going by. And since they weren't anywhere near railroad tracks...

"It hatched! The nest hatched!" Anna was yelling. 

Dean had kind of figured out something was up, what with the roaring and bright lights – it was like someone had set off fireworks outside during the middle of the day.

"Do you think we can risk going out to look?" Sam asked, already peering out into the yard. Dean risked a peek out the windows, but there wasn't much to see with all the scrap metal and car hulks in the way – just light that could be bottle rockets and Roman candles if you didn't know that there was an angels' nest out back.

"Yeah. I think."

 

If Sam had tried to envision the nest hatching before, he wouldn't have thought of the Aurora Borealis come to curl around the disassembled cars of Bobby's salvage yard. Admittedly, he couldn't think of what he might have imagined the hatching to go like, since it was really beyond human experience anyway, but light like a psychedelic Mandelbrot’s set curling mere yards above Bobby's place wasn't it.

When they got to the sigil line, Anna was nearly dancing in glee, and Cas was watching the spinning lights with a broad smile.

Even Gabriel looked excited, standing on his favorite car hood and looking up into the sky with a smile that was wholly, simply happy, with no malice or bitterness in it all.

"When's the last time a garrison hatched out a nest?" Sam asked as he paused by the archangel's roost. He watched Dean walk past the sigil line and get bear-hugged by Anna, who swung him around in a circle like an excited toddler. The surprise on Dean's face was almost as hilarious as the delight on Anna's.

He regretted saying a word, because the wondrous joy slid off Gabriel's face like spilled milk. "It's been over a million years – before Man was created, before my brother fell," the archangel admitted.

Sam thought for a moment, then said, "So Cas... he was part of the last generation of angels?"

"Yeah. He was, before … this..." Gabriel turned to look at the sky and the incandescence right above them. His eyes went soft, and his smile came back.

 

The angels had excavated their pile of rotten garbage – well, vegetation, but it was still a big warm heap'o'stink – and were looking in concern at a speckled gray football the size of a large dog. Dean steadfastly refused to call it an egg, because seriously, that was just freaky.

"Is it d—maybe it just didn't take?" Sam suggested, in that soft gentle tone he used to for scared civilians.

Cas was frowning, and crouched down to rest his palm on the tight curved end. "No. It's alive. It's just…"

"It's not hatching," Anna said and frowned. She looked more confused than upset, unlike Cas, who was now making basso chirps at the thing. 

The other angels settled around them, adding their hands and voices in encouragement, but nothing happened.

Finally they drew away, sighing, and covered it back up.

"Sir?"

Dean swung around to confront – a motley collection of hipsters, old fogies, and black-suited stiffs.

"Angels?" he asked Cas.

"Our new brothers and sisters, yes," Cas said.

Dean froze, and gave Cas the side-eye. "Wait, these are the eggs?"

"No. They hatched. They are now angels."

Dean shrugged, and buttonholed the closest of the new angels. "So, what's your name?"

The angel looked confused, and glanced over at Anna.

"He doesn't have one yet. The Father gave our names to us, at the moment of our Creation, but these new brothers," Anna said, smiling at the nameless angel, "don't have ones yet."

Dean though that was pretty damned sad – God could at least have dropped names for the kids into their heads, if He existed and was paying any attention.

"Tell you what," he said, mostly addressing the new and nameless angel, "How about we call you 'Jack' until you find your real name?"

The angel stared at Dean soulfully for a moment – seriously, were the kids all going to copy Cas and his complete lack of social graces? – and then announced "I am Jack!" to all and sundry.

The other new angels perked up at that and came close. 

"Are you telling us our names?" one of them asked.

"Has the Father told you who I am?" said another.

Soon, Dean was being gently mobbed by dozens of newly awaken angels who wanted to know their names, and seemed to think that Dean had them tucked in his back pocket.

 

"'Impala'?!" Gabriel said. "Why are we letting him name them again!?"

"Because he is the Righteous Man, and we swore obedience to him in the service of the Lord," Castiel said, and frowned.

Sam sighed. "Maybe we can make it more angelic… what's Hebrew for 'gazelle'?"

"'Ayal'," Cas said.

"So that would be 'Ayalel' maybe?"

"No," Gabriel snapped and threw up his hands, "That kid's name is Impala now."

Anna sighed, and turned to Sam, "Our names as you know them, Sam, are only approximation anyway. They resonate differently amongst ourselves," she frowned delicately, "and 'Impala' just feels strange."

"That kid is going to get beaten up for lunch money," Gabriel grumbled.

Sam tried not to imagine winged kids in a schoolyard lined with clouds, but Gabriel's suggestions were insidious. Maybe he should just stay away from the archangel, unless he wanted to scrub out the inside of his brain three times a day.

"It's not the worst name ever," Anna offered.

Cas looked skyward, and then offered, "'Ya'anahel'", which made both Anna and Gabriel snort.

"What's that mean?"

"Ostrich of God."

"Dad loved the silly things." 

Sam really needed to get away from the angels.

"Did Dean just name her 'Penguin'?!" Anna yelped.

Far _far_ away.

"'Skylark'? That's not so bad."

"That is also a car," Cas said. "In 1965, the Buick company debuted a model called Skylark Gran Sport–"

"I knew that."

"I need alcohol to deal with his crazy names," Gabriel declared. "Serious alcohol. Maybe absinthe. You coming, Sam?"

"What? Oh... uhm...sure. Alcohol, that sounds like a good idea."

 

Dean sent the angels off to gather as many hunters as they could, as well as, not without some reluctance, crazy-stalker-girl Becky and what she'd called 'The Fangirl Army' when Sam had reluctantly emailed the loopy woman. They were going to be support-and-evacuation, not frontline fighters, because Sam had convinced Dean that they were going to need someone for support work, but they couldn't spare the experienced hunters. Dean just hoped things didn't go sideways. 

And that Becky remembered to keep her hands off Sam for the most part; Gabriel seemed to be taking that 'protect and obey Sam' thing a lot more seriously than Dean had ever thought he would, and Dean didn't think even crazy-stalker-girl deserved to be smote for making Sam uncomfortable.

At least it kept the archangel from teasing the hunters who began arriving at their staging area, such as it was. Mostly...

"I'm Gabriel."

"Just because those idiotic Winchesters forced a name on you to bind you–"

"Which they didn't, and that wouldn't work with a Trickster anyway," he snapped. "Some fairies, sure, that'd work, but Tricksters aren't fairies, and they change names the way you change socks. I'm _Gabriel_."

Tamara blinked, and visibly got it. And then she tempted fate (or at least a quick-tempered archangel) with, "Aren't you a little short for an archangel?"

Gabriel smirked at her, that sharp look that was all cruelty and ferocity. "No, I'm a little short for a stormtrooper. I'm perfectly sized for an archangel, and if you keep annoying me, I could always unfold myself from this Vessel and show you. For the half second it would take before your eyes began to melt."

Sam stepped in then, putting a hand on Gabriel's shoulder and pushing him away. "Okay, that's enough. Tamara, don't argue with the archangel. Gabriel, behave like a decent human being, for once."

"I'm not a human being," Gabriel pointed out. "Decent or otherwise."

"Pretend."

 

Dean wasn't having a good day. No day that started with trying to get twenty hunters and untold numbers of Chuck's groupies to cooperate would be good, but then Cas just had to drop a bomb over another planning session disguised as lunch

"Because, dude, you do NOT say that!"

Cas had his confused bitchface on. "But I do love you," he said. "You are Dean Winchester, and you are wholly worthy of love."

"You are a guy!"

Cas looked down at himself, fingering his ill-fitting suit and ratty trench like he was checking that his body still existed. "My Vessel is male, yes?" he said, hesitating like he didn't understand why that might possibly be a problem for Dean.

Of course, that's when Anna appeared, because Cas' random declaration of love wasn't awkward enough.

She stared at Cas a moment, and then told him, "He thinks you want to have sex with him."

Cas did that thing where Dean could see him trying to interpret the words into something that made sense to angels. As usual, he didn't succeed. 

"Oh," Cas said to Anna. Then he looked up at Dean and came out with, "I am willing, if you wish it, Dean."

"No!" Dean yelped, and maybe flailed a bit. In a manly, not girly, fashion.

"Then what is the problem?" Cas asked. "I love you. I hope you love me, but it will not change how I feel."

Even Anna winced at that. 

"Castiel, humans don't usually tell each other that quite so bluntly," she said in tones of patient explanation.

Cas frowned one of his 'humans are strange and troubling creatures' frowns. "They would be much happier if they were as honest as I am being."

Oh no, Dean was not going to let Cas getting away with all this awkward honesty. He had to learn that the thing to do was repress. "No, they wouldn't! This is just weird. It's too much!"

Anna signed, and nodded. "Dean's right, Cas. Humans don't like being so vulnerable."

"Humans are very confusing."

"I know," Anna agreed.

"We are not!" Dean felt he had to defend his species – especially from sad-eyed, too-honest angels. "You angels are just WEIRD!"

Cas looked hurt, in that stone-faced blank way of his. Mostly his back got stiffer – and considering the guy usually stood like he had a poker up his ass, that was saying something. "Do you not love me?" he asked, his gravel voice soft and searching.

Dean winced. "Cas... humans don't ask that like that."

Cas stared at him, like he was being human and stupid and human.

"What about Jimmy?"

Cas looked confused, like he didn't have a clue how his Vessel might relate to sex. As if Jimmy – the guy who was a trusting, devout, married-to-a-woman guy – might not even have an opinion on an angel hijacking his body for gay sex. 

"He's still in there," Dean thumped Cas on the chest. "I know he is. Gabriel made him talk when you were all crazy-angel."

"Oh," Cas said, and looked down at his body – Jimmy Novak's body – again. "But... he consented."

Dean stared at Cas, appalled. "Not to _sex_! JEEZ, CAS!"

Cas flinched, and muttered, "I do not understand your objection." Then he tilted his head. "But as you believe this is a stumbling block, I withdraw any and all offers of sexual congress."

Anna was pinching her nose, frustration written on her narrow, pale face. "I don't think I could even begin to explain..."

"Try!" Dean shouted.

Anna frowned, a bitchface worthy of Sammy at his bitchiest, and said, "Then stop touching Castiel, Dean. You're the one who started it!"

"What?" He had not.

Cas raised his hands in a gesture he had to be copying from Gabriel. Cas just wasn't a guy who talked with his hands, and the archangel was. "You put your arm around my neck," he said quietly, "It was very... intimate."

"Dude. It wasn't." Arm-slinging was a buddy-gesture. Dean did it to Sam all the time.

"Yes, it was," Cas insisted. "You touched me without need. I was not injured; I did not need assistance. You touched me simply because you wanted to."

"And you think a manly arm-sling was a COME-ON!?" Dean shouted, appalled.

Cas frowned, and his eyes went stubborn. More stubborn. Crap. Stubborn was something Cas was _good_ at, and this was extra-strength mule-headedness, Dean could just tell.

"Angels don't touch," Anna explained, "Dean, not like that."

"Hey, just because you're a bunch of repressed dicks—"

"Touching without need is intimacy, Dean, whether or not it's lustful."

"Dude, no. Come on." Dean took a breath, and tried to explain, "If that was true, Sam would be dating Gabriel – they keep arm-punching each other."

Cas sighed, and looked down. "Gabriel is very forward."

Anna snorted, and said, "Gabriel is a pervert, Cas. Say what you mean."

Dean stared at her, and then at Cas, who looked resigned, "What? No way. Sam is NOT dating the goddamned Trickster!"

Cas and Anna looked at each, raising their eyebrows and doing that wordless conversation thing. Then turned to look at him.

Dean felt sick. "Oh, no… yuck."

"I do not understand your object to Sam finding affection," Cas said. "It is rare enough in your lives, and in this troubled time–"

"It's Gabriel!" That should be enough. 

"Yeah, all right," Anna shrugged. "He's not the most reliable person in existence."

 

Sam rubbed his eyes and looked at the archangel sitting beside him, scribbling doodles over several blades that Sam really hoped were wards of power and protection in Enochian and not just doodles. He was way too tired, having spent the day trying to get Dean's half-baked ideas and Cas' kind of terrifying elaborations on the same drilled into the heads of recalcitrant hunters and moon-eyed fangirls. The fangirls were terrifying.

Which was of course when Dean came by, his shoulders hunched angrily as he slapped a beer into Sam's hand before he rounded on Gabriel and barked at him.

"If you didn't think Cas had orders – if you still thought Michael and his side were the ones following God's plan – would you even be helping us?"

Gabriel looked up, his mouth thinned with anger. "No."

"Fuck! Then why should I even keep you around?"

"I swore the oath, just like every other angel here."

"So, if I tell you to kill your brothers – Michael and Raphael and fucking Lucifer, you will?"

Gabriel rolled his eyes and made a flapping gesture with his hands, as if asking why it was him who got Dean's tough questions. "It's unlikely I could kill one of them, not to mention all three. But if you command it, I am bound by my oath to _try_."

"You didn't have to give that oath, Gabriel. No one expected you to..."

"You know why I gave that oath? No one expected me to – I'm not part of a garrison, and archangels generally hoe their own row..."

"No. I don't know why you swore," Sam said quietly. "Tell me."

Gabriel started, shaking all over like a confused dog, and coughed as he switched to looking at Sam, his whole body relaxing . "Wording, Sammy. Watch your wording. That's a compulsion there."

Sam paused, then nodded. "It is. I'm sorry, but I should... just tell me, Gabriel. Why did you take the oath? You didn't have to."

"It's cowardly."

"Gabriel," Sam reiterated. If he let the archangel, Gabriel would talk around the answer all night. He could a professional contestant on avoiding the topic. "Spill it."

"I'm oathbound to obey Dean," Gabriel gestured at Sam's brother, as if Dean himself were an example of something. "If he orders me to kill my brothers, it's not my responsibility anymore. It's just _obedience_."

Sam blinked, and then turned to look at Dean, who was frowning but not fuming. _Gabriel_ wants _to be compelled to kill his brothers?_ Sam wondered. _No, he wants to not feel guilty for killing his brothers, even though it will probably be necessary._ God had a lot to answer for, given how fucked up the archangels were turning out to be.

 

"This isn't the way," Gabriel complained the next day. "You should be using angels to screen the humans, not setting out mixed groups."

"What, so that the humans can get eaten fast if something gets by the line of angels?" Sam snapped.

"No, dumbass. If you're trying to protect your hunters and the fangirls, you have to put your expendable forces on the exposed edge. You don't send people in when you've got the bomb disposal robot available."

"Stop talking about yourself like you're a robot! Jeez." Sam stopped, as facts in his head suddenly shifted from a jumble of mismatched pieces to a half-completed jigsaw puzzle, enough that he had the shape of it, and an idea of the picture. 

"Oh god. You are..."

Gabriel looked up him through narrowed eyes, "What, Sam?"

"Angels. You're all created beings. God made you to serve him and obey him. You don't believe in free will because you don't have free will. You're like … tools. Like robots. That can think and feel and I think I'm going to be sick."

"What? Sam?" Gabriel asked, honest concern in his voice. The archangel took a step closer. "Are you all right?" 

Sam barked out a laugh. "Ha, no. I didn't understand, before. You... angels don't have souls, do you?"

"No. We have our Grace, and our spirit, but souls are human."

"Jeez."

"Sam?"

"It's just kind of awful."

"It's all we've ever been, Sam."

'It's still awful. You ever read '2001'?"

"Sure, and saw the movie. Great cinematography, slow pacing."

Sam frowned, and looked down at Gabriel, who was doing a really good job of copying Castiel's 'humans are strange and confusing' look which, given that Gabriel had been on Earth for centuries, he really shouldn't need. He should – did – understand humans better than any angel except maybe Anna.

"The ship's computer, HAL, kills his crew because he was given contradictory orders and that was the only logical resolution." Sam blew his hair out of his face, and looked away, because Gabriel with a serious, somber face was just _wrong_. "I let you make this oath, let Dean tie you down further because he doesn't trust you, so now do you go crazy because what Dean wants and what I want and what God wants aren't anywhere near the same thing?"

"I'm already crazy, Sam."

"Oh... You..." _know_ , except that he didn't say it. Sam wasn't that tactless. He wasn't Dean.

"Yes, I know." Gabriel sighed, a long shuddering breath, "I've known for a long time, Sam."

 _What_ , Sam wonder, _does it take for an archangel to think he's insane?_ Had Gabriel finally abandoned Heaven because he couldn't survive the strife anymore? Sam had met more than a few people in his life who had run from their families for entirely sane reasons – mostly because their families were anything _but_ sane. 

 

"They don't think they have free will, fine," Dean said later, when they were driving from Bobby's towards Kansas, towards the ground _they_ had chosen to fight on, not Lucifer's stupid Detroit. There was a loose caravan of cars and trucks following them, all heading towards Lawrence and what looked to be a show-down. "We'll use that – give them orders and get them to obey and fuck them if they don't think they have a choice. They have a choice every time, and they keep choosing to be crazy and stupid."

Sam frowned. "I don't want to abuse our power, Dean. You don't understand how seriously the angels take that oath."

"Fuck that. Cas and Anna I trust, and the kids because they're too stupid not to follow Cas and Anna. But Gabriel will do whatever the fuck he wants if I'm not right there to yank his chain, and he's already said that killing you is a viable plan."

Sam looked away. "He was just going over our options. It would work–"

"NO!" Dean roared. "You are not dying, do you hear me? You aren't allowed to die, and sure as hell not because the god-damned Trickster thinks it might be funny!"

 

Missouri took one look at them, and the three angels who just appeared behind them, and gave them a look telling Sam that she was just putting up with them on sufferance, especially when Gabriel gave a cheerful little waggle of his fingers. She'd let them in, fed them, and told they were being damned fools, and that they had to wash up after themselves.

Sam still couldn't quite believe that Missouri had gotten Gabriel of all people to wash the dishes – by hand, no less, instead of zapping them clean. But it turned out that even archangels knew not to mess with the psychic if they knew what was good for them. Or maybe Gabriel just thought it was a lark to wash dishes – Sam really couldn't figure out how he thought.

But he'd finished, had even stacked them neatly away in Missouri's cabinets, and then had conjured up a really nice beer for Sam (the label was entirely in German, and featured a goat; Sam let it go) and something pink and girly, complete with a paper umbrella, for himself. Sam could smell the sugar from where he stood, and wondered if angels could come down with diabetes from unhealthy food habits – probably not, or Gabriel would have keeled over decades ago.

"Hands are strange, when you really look at them," Gabriel peered down at his own hands, solid and square and somewhat wrinkled from the dishwater, with intense scrutiny.

"Oh, telekinesis. Right." Sam said. That made sense – why would angels need fingers in their real forms if they could just manipulate objects by thinking about it?

"Tentacles," Gabriel said.

Sam stared at the angel, who went back to slurping his girly umbrella-drink. After a long indecisive moment, Sam declared, "You're just shitting with me."

Gabriel smirked and said, "Man was made in Dad's image, not us," which meant Sam was going to be imagining squid angels for days.

"You're all kinds of screwed up," Sam said at last, after he'd finished most of the goat-logoed beer.

"I wasn't created to be a soldier, Sam. None of us were, originally."

Sam turned to look at the archangel. "Cas said that archangels were 'Heaven's most terrifying weapon'… what were you? Before?"

Gabriel smiled, soft and rueful. "An engine of Creation."

"And you're not that now?" Sam asked. Angels were supposed to be _eternal_ – though eternity among the dicks that most angels had turned out to be was something Sam almost couldn't blame Gabriel for skipping out of Heaven to avoid. What could change something that was supposed to be unchanging?

"When Lucifer rebelled," Gabriel said, "and raised his hand against Heaven because he would not bow to your kind, I was – we all were – remade by God into soldiers." Gabriel wrapped his arms around himself and looked away. 

"In the First War," he continued, "we fought with stones and hunting spears and belt knives and our bare flesh, because we had nothing better. Because we knew nothing better. We had never needed weapons before. And I was merciless and ferocious in my Father's service, smiting those who had been my brothers."

Gabriel sighed, and turned to look at Sam fully. "I didn't want to be _that_ ever again."

"I'm sorry."

Gabriel shrugged, and then tilted his head to look up at ceiling.

"Huh. That took longer than I expected..."

"What?"

"Dean and Anna. And Castiel."

Sam frowned at the archangel, because what... oh, no.

"You've got to be shitting me—"

"Nope!"

"Dean is not fucking them. Not both of them—-"

"Aw, Sammich, are you feeling left out?" Gabriel drawled. "Because if you are, you could always tell me so. I'm _obedient_ , remember?"

Sam recoiled from the archangel. "No! Not interested! So not interested!"

Gabriel froze, his face twisted in confusion and hurt. "Why not?"

"Well, for one thing, you're a guy!"

Gabriel rolled his eyes, and suddenly flowed through half a dozen bodies, each cute and tiny and very female, before coming back to his brown-haired male form. "Not if I don't wanna be."

"And you're an archangel."

"I didn't know you were so picky, Sam. Werewolf and demon are okay, but angels are a no-no?"

"Yes! I mean no!" Sam paused, which caused Gabriel to take a hopeful step closer. Sam had to change his argument, and fast. "I mean, I can't just order you to sleep with me."

"Wouldn't be sleeping—-"

"—-If you can't say 'no', then you can't really say 'yes' then either."

Gabriel stopped. "I can say no. I just can't enforce it."

Sam spread his hands. "See that's exactly what I me—"

"Fff," Gabriel snorted dismissively. "Any human woman would be in the same boat, Sam. If you didn't want to take 'no' for an answer, there's not much a normal human could do to make you. Even a witch would have a hard time fighting you off."

Sam froze. Yeah, it was true, he could – had – beaten witches and demon-possessed women before, sometimes even barehanded, but to put it like that... He wasn't like that. He wasn't.

"I'm not a rapist." 

"I know you're not. You'd listen if I said 'no'."

"Yeah, I would. Of course I would."

"So will you listen when I say 'yes'?"

Sam looked down at Gabriel, at the woman's form Gabriel was wearing. Her face was serious, maybe a little annoyed – but not laughing at him. And not frightened or anxious, which Sam was kind of concerned about – all the crazy things the angels did because of their oath and orders, he didn't want anyone – Gabriel, Cas, Anna, any of the others – to feel that owed him anything besides their best efforts in the fight ahead. Curling up and trying to seduce him should definitely not happen because that damned oath or the angels' compulsion to obey orders from authority.

"Why me? Why now?"

"It's the End of the World, Sam. Tomorrow, we're going out to fight the Devil and the Host of Heaven."

"You're seriously trying the 'It's the End of the World' ploy on me?"

Gabriel shrugged. "Why not? It's the truth. And I like you well enough."

"Thanks," Sam said flatly.

"Oh, don't get your boxers in a twist, Sammy. I like you and I want to be close to a real person for a change. If I just wanted orgasms, I'm completely capable of conjuring up an infinite number of Playboy Bunnies."

"Why me?"

"Dean has Castiel."

Sam tried to parse that. Was Gabriel saying … Gabriel wanted Cas and since he couldn't have him Sam was...?

"So I'm your second choice?"

Gabriel snorted a laugh, and shook his head. "No. Just… no. I'm here because Castiel has a Word, a Word that I hadn't heard before, and that's more than anyone has had in two millennia."

"You said you skipped out…" Sam said, trying to lead Gabriel into explaining. For all that he was chatty, the archangel could talk around a topic like a politician if he wanted to.

"I had one last Word – sort of a time-delay instruction?" Gabriel said, obviously reaching for an analogy that a human could understand. "'Wait until this time, go here then, and deliver this message.' After that, all I had were the old Words I had before. I kept following them, but they were thin and worn and didn't make a lot of sense anymore."

Gabriel had kept following his Father's instructions, until there weren't any more to follow. And then he'd fallen back on what he'd done before – and Sam considered that. Once, Gabriel had been a warrior Archangel tasked with defeating and punishing his rebellious brethren. That he'd translated into becoming a Trickster and tormenting humans was horrific even as Sam admitted it was probably one of the more benign things the archangel could have come up with – at least he was focusing on individual wrong-doers on a case-by-case basis. That took time and limited the hurt to innocent bystanders. He could have been smiting cities and towns, the way Uriel had so obviously relished the opportunity to, the few times Sam had met the corrupted angel.

Sam decided his life really sucked. Admittedly, Gabriel's scary focused attention was better than that from the sociopathic stalker Lucifer, but really? Dean got Castiel, who loved Dean and cared for Dean and got beaten to shit and back for Dean, and Sam got a bipolar archangel with a sharp tongue and all sorts of embarrassing behaviors. Sam wasn't quite sure if God hated him, or just thought Sam's struggles were funny; if Gabriel got his sense of humor from his Father, Sam was doomed.

That thought almost made the battle of Armageddon look better.

"Okay!" Gabriel's face transformed with a grin, one without a hint of mockery, and when Sam recovered from the full staggering joy on the archangel's face, he realized they were no longer in the kitchen. He didn't think this was what the spare room in Missouri's house looked like either, but if Gabriel wanted to give them a better bed than a foldaway, Sam wasn't going to object too much.

Especially not when he found his arms full of a tiny olive-skinned brunette who'd leapt on him the moment Gabriel had finished changing into her.

"This okay?" the archangel asked as she tried to hike herself higher, as if Sam was a tree to be climbed. 

"...ah?" Sam said in shock. He was trying not to topple over from Hurricane Gabriel's onslaught, and had to sit down on the bed far too clumsily for a man who had a woman climbing all over him.

"Small, leggy, female, with nice tits and _not_ a blonde. That's what you like, right?" Gabriel asked again.

"… no?" Sam said.

Gabriel made a mocking snort, and ripped Sam's shirt open from neck to navel.

"Gabriel, no!" Sam yelled, and grabbed at archangel's hands. He didn't dump said archangel out of his lap, but it was tempting.

"What _now_?" Gabriel whined.

"How about you be yourself..." Sam suggested, "you know, regular you."

"No. I want to have sex, and 'regular me' has too much dick to appeal to you."

"Gabriel—"

"Sam," the archangel said, pushing down on Sam's chest, and straddling his legs as he went down against the bedspread, "turn off that great big brain of yours for a change, and have some _fun_!"

Sam looked at the very enthusiastic, small woman holding him down and decided he'd done enough trying to talk himself out of enjoying what Gabriel was offering. They were probably all going to die horribly tomorrow – he could justify sexing up an archangel with "It is the End of the World", at least for tonight.

 

The next morning, Sam was sitting on Missouri's porch and watching angels in her yard as he drank his morning coffee.

Gabriel, back to his normal male form, was checking the fit of Castiel's armor – considering that Cas had just blinked it into existence, Sam kind of wondered at its efficacy, too, but he hadn't had the nerve to just manhandle the angel around to check. Gabriel, being an archangel, had no compunction about it, and was fussing with the neckpiece worriedly. 

Personally, Sam would have preferred helmets, but the angels hadn't brought or made, or summoned into being, anything resembling a helmet. They had cuirasses that looked like they'd stolen them from Roman legionnaires and Greek hoplites and maybe Goliath and his Philistines while they were at it, and greaves and gauntlets, but no helmets. Maybe angels didn't worry so much about getting their Vessels' brains knocked out or something.

He and Dean had been offered armor too, but Dean had pointed out they had no idea how to _move_ in what had to be pounds and pounds of steel if it was real, and not a manifestation of an angel's Grace somehow – Sam though it might be both. Instead, they were getting reinforced leather coats to wear. Sam was kind of glad of it; he would have felt bizarre in armor, but a little extra protection could only help. 

 

"We all here?" Dean asked as he looked around the parking lot – there were hunters and civilian fans of Chuck's books and dozens of angels all gathered in a state park parking lot outside of Lawrence because he'd told them to follow him if they wanted to save the world. He was so screwed if this didn't work out.

"Okay..." he said, feeling a little sick.

"You'll be fine, Dean," Sam murmured, and squeezed his arm in reassurance. Dean rolled his eyes, because there was no reason for Sam to get that emotional. It wasn't like they were picking a fight with Heaven and Hell or anything...

"Olley Olley Oxen Free, you _ASSHOLES_!" Dean yelled to the sky.

Anna huffed out a laugh, and set her hand on Dean's shoulder. Then she turned her face to the sky, and opened her mouth to sing – pure notes that felt to Dean like Metallica warming up to play _Enter Sandman_ , coiled energy winding up.

Cas stepped to his other side, and put his hand to Dean's shoulder, right over where his hand had once seared into Dean's flesh. The angel tipped his head back and added his gravel tones to Anna's song. 

Then Ridwan's voice, so bright and pure in her young Vessel, added itself to the song, and the three of them were braiding the harmonics together before reaching out to add more of the garrison into the song until Dean had a veritable choir of angels at his back, singing a challenge to Heaven and Hell for him.

Finally, a sound so deep that Dean didn't hear it so much as feel it throb through his bones added itself to the chorus. Gabriel was joining in, his true Voice so deep that it made the very air vibrate with music no human could hear.

 

"This seriously can't be good," Sam bitched as they rounded the curve and saw what was around the park's visitor's center.

It was definitely War's sweet little Mustang, cherry red and parked like a fucking challenge right in the lot.

But next to it in a row were parked a '68 Charger, dingy and white; an old Bronco with a trailer attached, shiny and demon-eye black; and a rusting Pinto that might have been grey once.

"Seriously. Two of the Horsemen drive sweet rides, but one of them drives a farm truck, and one of them drives a deathtrap! What the hell?!"

"What are you talking about, Dean?"

"The cars, Anna, the cars!"

Anna looked at the row of cars, as did Cas and Gabriel. They were all obviously baffled, though Gabriel was amused more than anything.

"That's War's car," Sam pointed to the Mustang. It's gorgeous cherry color and mint condition was actually ominous, once you knew it belonged to a Horseman.

"The Mustang? War drives a _Ford_?" Anna asked dubiously.

"Hey, this is a beautiful car!" Dean said. He rapped the hood in approval.

"Maybe. But the others? That's a truck," Anna pointed at the Bronco, "and that," she glanced at the Charger, "has seen better days."

"And the fourth vehicle is dangerous, is it not, Dean?" Cas said. "It has a gas tank that is badly located and prone to rupture and explode?"

"How do you even recognize a Pinto, Cas?"

"I can read, Dean. And you talk incessantly about cars and their virtues."

"What are you pointing at?" Gabriel asked.

Anna, and Dean and Cas too, turned to look at the archangel, who had his head tilted in a curious-dog-is-curious gesture.

"Uh, the Pinto?" Dean said, and stuck a thumb at the rusting near-wreck.

Gabriel frowned, and looked at the car. No, Sam realized, he looked in the direction of the Pinto, but he couldn't see what Dean was pointing at. Gabriel _couldn't_ see it. 

Gabriel turned to frown at Dean

"The what?" he asked, like he suspected Dean of trying to mess with him. Gabriel was an expert at mind-games, and thus was a great bullshit detector, but this time he was wrong. Sam didn't know why the archangel couldn't see the Pinto – what had to be Death's car, based on the color –

 _Because it was Death's car_ , Sam realized. 'None of us has ever died'. The archangels didn't know Death, perhaps they couldn't even perceive the Pale Horseman. Maybe they wouldn't, until Lucifer or Michael were killed. The thought made Sam shiver.

"No, here," Sam said, and pressed Gabriel's hand down on the roof of the Pinto. The archangel jerked, a full-body twitch, and he stared down determinedly, but Sam was relatively sure that he still didn't see the car, only felt it through his hands.

"As fascinating as this is," Dean began, "don't we have—-"

 **…!** rang out in the night sky, a sound so deep and dense that Sam was rattled like a coffee can.

 

The sound echoed in the cool night, a long bleating wail, like an elephant in the movies, or a steam engine being tortured. Or a horn, being played by an angel, to herald the End of the World.

"...Raphael..." Cas breathed beside him.

Dean shot a look at his friend. Cas looked – determined. So did Anna, further down. Gabriel, over on Sammy's far side, looked _furious_.

"Be right back, time to talk to my brother and his fish," Gabriel babbled, just before he finger-snapped himself away.

"Fish?" Dean asked

"Book of Tobit," Anna said.

Dean cocked his head at her, and snorted. "Whatever. … Freaking archangels..."

There was a flash of lightning, and Sam was hit from behind by a wave of force, knocking him off balance and into Dean. They both went down, and from the yelps, so did everyone else.

He rolled over frantically, trying to regain his feet, but stopped when he saw the pillar of light in the sky – a sick pink-gold.

"Oh, Father forgive us," moaned one of the angels – Ioliel, maybe.

"What? What is that?!"

"Raphael. It's Raphael," the angel gulped. "Gabriel ripped out his Grace."

"...Great," Dean said, right as streamers of black smoke started pouring out of the woods.

After that, it was an all-out melee. Dean found himself swatting at things he couldn't see, sounds that coalesced into things with too many eyes and teeth, creepy crawlies of every description, and he lost sight of Cas. He lost sight of Sam. And the things still kept coming.

He was knocked off his feet by something that smelled horrific and growled like a hellhound when a bright silver spike slammed through the nothing that made up the monsters and sprayed Dean with invisible stickiness. "Oh Deano," Gabriel caroled, and hauled him to his feet, "you gotta be more careful!" 

It didn't help that the archangel kept smiling, too wide and psychotically cheerful, once Dean got back into the groove of killing things. Even though they were fighting vampires and witches and monstrous beasts that Dean didn’t know what the fuck they were, except probably made out of nightmares, Gabriel was having way too much fun.

Cas hadn't been kidding when he called archangels 'Heaven's most terrifying weapons'; Gabriel was almost falling over giggling, even though he was splattered with gore – because blood just wasn't that chunky. Dean certainly didn't want to get near him; there was no telling if the archangel could even recognize his allies now, since his eyes were glassy and happy and utterly _utterly_ bonkers. 

No wonder Gabriel hadn't want to get back into the game, if this was what he was like in battle. It scared Dean, and he was human – he knew crazy. He didn't think angels were made to deal with it.

"Okay," Sam muttered as he eventually staggered up to Dean, "that was the first wave."

"Yeah, so what's that?" Dean snapped, as he watched Gabriel wander off across the scraggly field, gleefully stabbing things that weren't fast enough to ooze away from him. The archangel was seriously disturbing. "Four, five hundred demons and monsters..?"

"Change of plans," Sam said, and grinned. "Becky had a brain-storm just now."

"Do I even want to know what that loopy bi—"

"She's going to make holy water."

"Yeah, so?" Fat lot of good a few more jugs of holy water were going to do them at the moment.

"By blessing the _clouds_. Ioliel is going to help her get high enough."

Dean paused, and looked up at the sky. "It's gonna rain...? It's gonna rain!"

Sam shrugged and grinned. "Halleluiah."

 

Thirty minutes later, one wrong turn in the dark, and Sam was going to get himself killed in a stand of cottonwoods by a middle-aged witch with a bald spot, a beer belly, and a mean left hook. His life was so glamorous.

Sam flipped over, trying to get to his feet, only to see the witch looming over him. Except...

The man was wavering on his feet, covered with sweat. No, not sweat, water – it was trickling out of his pores in sheets, torrents. And underneath, his skin was turning dry, parched, desiccated. It was one of the most hideous things Sam had ever seen.

Finally, the witch collapsed, not like a person fainting, but like a puppet with its strings cut, straight down in a heap. A puff of dust rose up, even though the body was surrounded by water, gallons of it wetting the ground.

"That," Sam decided, "was gross."

"Sorry to offend your delicate sensibilities, Sammy," Gabriel said.

"Didn't say I was ungrateful," Sam said, and tried to climb to his feet. He couldn't quite manage it, until Gabriel reached down with one hand, and pulled him upright.

Gabriel had his sword in his other hand, and a long twisting horn tied over his shoulder – literally, a horn, like off a goat or something. Given that it was almost straight in its twist and over a yard long, maybe not a goat, Sam thought. What the hell was Gabriel doing with – oh fuck, it was a horn. Gabriel had a horn. This really was Armageddon.

Sam didn't have time to panic, because trailing the angel was the weird smell of something, sweet and heavy, almost cloying.

"Myrrh," Gabriel muttered, his sword up and his head cocked. He was listening for something Sam couldn't hear.

Of course, it turned out to be a sight the archangel couldn't see. Sam should have known from Gabriel's inability to see the Pinto back at the parking lot.

It came on warm fog, carrying an eerie hush with it – dark and smoky and inevitable.

Death, the Horseman.

 **Sam Winchester** , it said in a way that didn't actually make noise, **you have been expected**.

Gabriel startled at the voice that wasn't made of sound, and tried to get in front of Sam, but the being, tall and insubstantial as a shadow, halted him with:

**Do not interfere, Seraph.**

Gabriel hissed, and tossed his head, showing his teeth. It was pretty much the most animalistic thing Sam had ever seen him do, and it was creepy as fuck. Especially since he seemed rooted in place otherwise – proven when he shivered and hissed and snapped his fingers, and even spread his blue-white wings, but didn't move from where he'd been stopped.

He looked worried and angry, and maybe even a little frightened.

**Do you build a house to stand forever, do you seal a contract to hold for all time?**

"What?" Sam asked, completely confused. He hadn't expected a quiz on _contract law_ from Death.

**I am the shadow of Creation, Samuel Winchester, the Adversary that all born of Earth struggle against. I give form to your lives.**

**You think me an enemy. I am not. I am your opponent.**

"Well, you sure seem like an enemy right now," Sam replied. "Why don't you let Gabriel go, and we can talk if you want?"

 **The angel can barely perceive me,** Death said. It sounded … bemused for lack of a better word. Sam found it seriously freaky, **for the Firstborn barely have need of me. There is so little of them to die.**

Sam looked sideways at Gabriel, who was all but vibrating trying to get free, but still couldn't move or see Death, given the way he wasn't even looking in the right direction. 

"So little? Angels aren't small—"

**They are inconsequential. Mere tools in the hands of the Maker. And He has turned His hands to other tasks. You are more interesting.**

Sam didn't really want to be 'interesting' to Death.

Gabriel hissed again, and his wings swung out, mantling in frustration. The left set brushed against Death's smoky insubstantial form, and immediately crackled into hoarfrost and snow. 

The archangel shrieked with a pain so breathless and fierce that Sam barely heard him, but he did hear the thin scream, and whirled to see Gabriel crash to his knees. He was gurgling and spitting dribbles of bright syrupy glow – his Grace, seared by a brush with Death.

 **That was foolish, Son of God.** Death said.

"I have to protect Sam," Gabriel gasped, and scraped the liquid Grace from his face. He wiped his hand on the ground, and the grass turned green, sprouting and flowering under the pure Creation that was even the tiniest fraction of Gabriel's true being.

**You are following orders. And foolish.**

"Gabriel, back off! I'm okay."

"No, I have to protect… have to protect…" Gabriel looked glassy-eyed and more than a little bewildered.

 **A tool, and a broken, confused one at that. The Maker should have unmade you all, when He was finished. You will never be as He hoped.** Death reached out a smoky, skeletal hand.

"You! Back off!" Sam shouted, stepping in front of Gabriel. Which put him within reach of Death, and wow, was this not a good idea.

"Sam," Gabriel coughed from behind him, "Get away from Death. She'll destroy you."

 **I give you a gift, son of Eve.** Death turned to look at Sam. **Use the tools in your hands wisely. They are, after all, tools.**

The cool icy touch as Death kissed him in benediction made Sam stiffen, and he barely restrained himself from throwing himself backwards. 

**I am the Reaper, Sam. What should I wish for, but the good of the harvest?**

Death smiled beautifully, like Jess's smile, like his Mom's smile, and vanished, leaving warm smoke and something that clattered dully as Sam backed away.

"Shit," he said. That was weird.

Sam shook his head, something felt odd – all right, he'd been literally kissed by Death, so feeling odd wasn't actually unexpected, but something was wrong with his head. It took him a long moment to realize that his hair, at least part of it, was wrong where it flopped into his eyes.

He grabbed the errant lock, and tried to look at it. "Did my hair go white?!" he asked. He turned back to look at Gabriel, who looked a million times better – which meant he now looked like he'd been trampled by one horse, not an entire herd of elephants.

Gabriel rubbed his mouth, tried resettling his wings – still unpleasantly icy looking, Sam wondered how much they hurt – and nodded. "Yeah, a bit of it. Looks distinguished."

"Really?"

"No," the archangel rolled his eyes, "you look like a badger."

"Thanks, Gabriel."

"I live to serve." He grunted, and tried to climb to his feet. Sam had to lend him a hand, which was severely complicated because Gabriel didn't – maybe couldn't – fold his wings back into whatever place they were tucked most of the time and Sam had to duck six extra limbs that were flailing around as the archangel staggered to his feet.

Sam could feel Death's kiss on his temple tingle for a long time. 

 

Sam and Gabriel staggered back—well, Sam staggered, Gabriel walked with a bounce in his step. He probably had a song in his heart too, the bastard – sometime after Dean and Cas and the others had beat back a third wave of demons with a conveniently timed rainstorm. Thank God or whoever for angels, clever angels with lightening and rainmaking capabilities. Not to mention clouds blessed to rain holy water.

"Shit," Gabriel said, first thing out of his mouth as his grin slid right off his face.

Dean took one look at Sam's appalled face, and the grim lines of Cas, Anna, and Gabriel and knew who had to be behind him.

"Sam, it's time," the Devil said in his soft, reasonable sounding voice.

"No. I'll never say yes," Sam bit out, "I can choose for myself, and I will _never_ choose you."

"I need a weapon," Dean said quietly to the angels, staring as Sam confronted Lucifer. There was a shuffle of footsteps to his side, and then he could see three hilts just on the edge of his vision, presented for him to grab. The angels – Cas, Anna, _and_ Gabriel – all had their blades out, offering them to him. He gulped, and then took the weapon from Gabriel, on the basis that he was closest, and could protect himself even without his sword. Hopefully. 

At the very least, Dean felt better that Gabriel didn't have a weapon; he'd proven to be a terror with a blade in his hand.

Of course, the Devil noticed that Gabriel had given away his sword. Son of a bitch looked up from where he'd been staring all moon-eyed at Sam, and smiled.

"You are weaponless, brother," Lucifer said.

Gabriel stepped forward to smile viciously. He reached behind his back, pulling another blade from his sword-belt. It was dark and curved and very simple.

"No. I'm not," Gabriel said, holding Death's scythe in his hand. 

Dean boggled for a moment. How the hell?—no, he didn't have time to wonder when Sam's archangel had tangled with the Pale Horseman (and won!) He had a job to finish.

"Finally, the end comes round at last. No, brother, it will not end so easily," Lucifer said Thunder cracked the sky, and more rain poured down, even as Gabriel went ass over teakettle, losing his weapon as Lucifer tossed him like a dog's ball across the ground.

"Fuck!"

"Michael is impatient. I see he hasn't changed. Pity," Lucifer said, his voice mild and infinitely sad, "You'd think he'd have matured."

"Oh, would you please shut up, please, brother." Gabriel groaned from where he'd been tossed. He managed to get shakily to his knees as Sam hovered over him.

"Hmm..." Lucifer leaned forward, his eyes full, "I think I have my leverage."

And then they all three – Sam, Gabriel, and the Devil – were gone.

Michael was there.

 

The dislocation had Sam also crash into a shrub as he landed off balance. He shook his head, breathed hard and deliberately, and hoped he wouldn't vomit. 

When his head cleared enough to make sense of things, what he saw was Gabriel and Lucifer, close enough that they could have touched, staring at each other like two strange cats. They were arguing in pleasant, modulated tones that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a classroom debate back at Stanford.

"I _like_ the world, thank you," Gabriel argued. "And the monkeys – they're fun."

"They're murderous, flawed savages."

"Potato, potatoh," Gabriel flipped his free hand extravagantly. "You're the one who invented war, brother."

For some reason, _that_ was what set Lucifer off, into a grab and strike that would have knocked Gabriel right off his feet if he hadn't dissolved into blue wavy sparkles – Trickster magic, to make copies and bi-locate himself, because he solidified under Lucifer's guard and smacked the other angel in the face with fist and wing. 

The Devil might have been the stronger archangel, but Gabriel moved like a viper and he fought dirty, apparently.

The two angels went at each other like tomcats, hissing and twisting and striking each other with quick darting attacks, battering each other with their wings. Lucifer's wings were beautiful and strange – a dark mossy green, and the feathers looked spiky, more like pine boughs than feathers. Sam thought he smelled spruce and holly, and wasn't entirely sure he was imagining things.

 

Dean stared at the archangel – it had to be Michael, because who else could it be. But Michael, the bastard, had gone too far...

"Son of a bitch!" Dean yelled.

Cas made a horrible choking sound – grating on and on.

"You're a son of a bitch, you know that?"

Michael tilted her head, and looked up at Dean through a face that was already beginning to blister. 

"You would not consent to be my Vessel, Dean Winchester. I was forced to... improvise."

"She's a KID!"

God, Dean knew her. A bit taller, a year older, but Michael was riding around in a Vessel picked just to force Dean's hand. Michael was riding Claire Novak.

"Put Jimmy to sleep, Cas."

"I will not," Cas ground out, his words muddy with rage, "He wants to know." 

 

"This is Destiny, brother," Lucifer was arguing.

"So what?!" Gabriel yelled back.

"Do you defy the Father? Are you … Fallen?"

Sam saw how Gabriel wavered at that, and decided it was his moment. He twisted the scythe that he'd picked up – Gabriel must have lost it sometime between Lucifer pulling them all away to this bit of lakeshore and the beginning of the argument with his brother, because neither of the archangels were armed – and moved to strike.

Lucifer's wings were big, glorious, and mantled out dramatically. Sam couldn't have had a better target if they were painted with bull's-eyes.

The last thing he noticed was Gabriel's face distorting into horror and fear, and then there was a horrible light as the impact snapped up Sam's arm.

 

"I should strike you two down where you stand," Michael said.

Cas and Anna didn't budge, just shifted their swords in their hands. 

"Screw that!" Dean barked. He wasn't letting his angels get killed because Michael was a complete son of a bitch. "You don't touch them, you hear me?"

Michael looked confused, in that vague way that angels had when they didn't understand humans a bit. "You would protect these debased and diminished creatures? They are unworthy of your splendor, Dean Winchester."

 

"Sam? Sam? Sammy, wake up."

That wasn't Dean, but the incongruous accent was familiar. Seriously, why did Gabriel have hints of Appalachia in his speech? It made no sense at all... Gabriel was older than the English language, older than the hills themselves. Why on Earth did he sound like he was from Tennessee? 

Sam blinked up at the frowning archangel and thought maybe he was suffering a concussion. Just a little one, hopefully, but he was kind of groggy and the feeling was sadly familiar.

"Up you get, Samsquatch," Gabriel said, and dragged Sam to sitting up. The angel wound up on the ground himself, blinking in surprise, which told Sam how much the crazy fight with Lucifer had taken out of him.

Speaking of Lucifer, the body, collapsed on the ground, didn't look like much now that the horrible oppressive weight of Lucifer's presence was gone. Just a man, pleasant enough features beneath all the damage. 

And then he groaned.

"The Vessel is still alive," Gabriel said, shock in his voice. "Fuck."

"It hurts..." 

Sam scrambled over, hands reaching out even as he realized that whatever else, this man was beyond any help he could offer.

"Please... Don't want to... die alone," the man moaned.

"I'm here," Sam said, and touched the man's fingers. He was wearing a ring, Sam noted, and wondered if there was some woman somewhere wondering what had happened to her husband. "I'm here. You're not alone."

Gabriel came up beside them, and crouched down, remote and eerie in how still he was.

"You're not alone, I'm here, I'm Sam, you'll be f—" Sam snapped his mouth shut and gulped against the lie.

Gabriel leaned down, and said, "You're badly injured, Nick. What do you want... oh, yeah, I can do that."

The archangel shifted, moving closer, and put his palm against the man's blistered scalp.

"We believe in the one High God," Gabriel began, "who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created Man and wanted Man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light…"

Sam let the archangel's soft cadence roll over him. There was almost nothing he could do for Nick – he'd been burned up from the inside, sores and blisters all over his face and body. All he could offer was the water from Gabriel's cup, and a hand to let the dying man know he wasn't alone in the dark.

"—We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen."

Nick died in the moment – just breathed out, and was gone.

Sam gave Gabriel a stricken look, then looked over his shoulder at the glow filling the sky. Finally he got up , and faced the orange glow in the distance.

"That's Michael, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Gabriel confirmed unhappily, "that's big brother."

"We'd better get there," Sam sighed. "C'mon." 

They walked towards the glow, trekking through the woods in the straightest path Sam could manage.

"What was that you said to him?"

Gabriel looked up with innocent eyes – or at least innocent if you didn't know him. "The Maasai Creed. What? I like it. It flows."

"It's real?"

"Of course it is. You humans – you think your religions are fixed in stone. But they change, and grow, and flower. It's beautiful." Gabriel smiled, not his usual smirk, but a fond and indulgent smile, like humanity was just a bunch of cute toddlers playing in a sandbox.

Maybe that was true, if you were an eons-old celestial being. Sam really didn't know, so he nodded and kept plodding forward. 

 

Light was coming through the trees, and there was a sudden dew that turned into trickles of water, until Sam and Gabriel arrived. Dean wasn't a bit surprised, what with the way the archangel was wrapped in wings of fog, his silly armor and looped bedazzled belt-thing ('loros', he heard Sam correct in his head) glowing with his own traveling spotlight. 

Michael, by contrast was all fire and soot, and she frowned at her brother, ignoring everyone else in favor of the other archangel.

"Gabriel," Michael said, anger edging into the words. "You are prodigal."

"Uhm, wow," Sam said. "This is not good..." 

Gabriel was staring down at the Michael with narrowed eyes. "I'm not answering to you, big brother. I may be all kinds of fucked up, but I'm so glad I'm not _you_."

"What have you done?"

"Sammy the Wonderboy just stopped your fucking war," Gabriel snapped, then smirked at the other archangel and tapped his chest. "I might have helped a little." Then Gabriel's wings snapped out, two of them arcing over Sam, Dean, and the other angels protectively, and the other four closing around Michael like a net of mist and light.

Michael didn't like that, not all, and made her anger clear by shoving her spear clear through one of Gabriel's wings.

Their archangel shrieked, his mouth open soundlessly even as the air battered at them from the force of his screaming.

Michael had a brief triumphal grin, and then Gabriel counterattacked.

It should have been ridiculous, a slender girl against a guy in armor. Gabriel might not have been particularly tall or muscular, but he still had a decent breadth of shoulder, and he was fighting a girl – except Michael threw back her head in a gesture that was all too familiar to Dean, and erupted out of Claire Novak like smoke from a volcano, fiery and burning.

"Shit!" Gabriel cursed as he threw himself sideways, and then threw his own head back. Mist spewed out of the archangel, except it _was_ the archangel, mist and water and shimmering rainbow colors.

Nothing had prepared him for just how damned _big_ archangels were. Michael was vast, as wide as the sky itself, fire and will, wings, eyes, scales and feathers, burning and enormous in a way that nothing like a dragon. Dean could feel his skin grow tight just from the heat.

And Gabriel was just as vast, as wide, all wings and scales and eyes, and cool cool light, eerie blue and twisting like a whirlwind, like a hurricane, deceptively fast and deliberate and unstoppable.

They bellowed at each other, like two church organs throwing down, and twisted among the clouds. Light sparked and slapped as the archangels bit and gouged at each other.

Dean gulped, and pulled Claire close – ground zero below an archangel death-match was no place for a young girl. Heck, it was no place for _him_ , and he had to be here.

"Oh, crap," Sam said, cutting through Dean's examination of the kid.

Gabriel – not Gabriel, his Vessel – was staggering to its feet. The creature the archangel had been wearing wobbled for a minute, then steadied. It looked at them with burning orange eyes, and growled.

Anna and Cas strode forward, their swords up in en garde position, and the monster stepped back before their advance.

"Stay down," Cas said. "We won't hurt you if you stay down."

"Yes," Anna agreed, her voice soft and soothing, "be a good monster, and no one will get hurt.

The creature blinked at them, and then stepped back, whining and coughing in distress. When it crouched down on its haunches, Sam thought that was submission.

Until it leapt up and ignited, shapeshifting as it jumped to come down on four fiery hooves. It mule-kicked Anna fifty feet into a tree.

Its pony head opened all the way back to its eyes, showing teeth like an alligator, and bit down on Cas' sword arm. It shook the angel like a rat and flung him into a park bench. Its tongue came out to lick its lips and it turned towards the collapsed angel. The creature made obscenely delighted sounds as glided towards Cas.

Claire shrieked.

The monster pony jerked around to stare at them. It snorted and sidled, dancing on its burning hooves for a moment, just as if it was just a real horse spooking. 

Then it calmed down, and it stalked towards, its head down and its ears back. It moved like a wolf, not a horse at all. 

And it bared its teeth. There were a lot of them, and its mouth opened all the way back to its eyes again.

"Dean, give me the sword!"

"What?!"

"Gimme the sword! Gabriel's sword!"

"Are you crazy? That thing will trample you before you can stick it!"

Sam wondered briefly if it would be as embarrassing as he thought to defeat both sides in the Apocalypse and then be gacked by a carnivorous horse monster before they could enjoy their victory. It probably would be.

"Use the scythe!"

"That's too much kill! Gabriel will need the body after he deals with Michael!"

Did Sammy seriously think his archangel was going to win the Celebrity Death Match going on in the sky? Dean risked a glance up – all he could see was red and blue light coiling around each other, like a heap of snakes. Who could tell who was winning? Michael was Heaven's General; he had to be winning, had to be a better fighter than Gabriel.

 

Sam held his ground, and held Gabriel's sword, and hoped it would work. The horse monster shrieked at him again, and then shifted into the male form that looked so much like Gabriel. The monster's orange eyes were sad and confused as a scolded dog, and Sam almost sighed in relief.

Then monster hissed, and opened its mouth in threat – to see Gabriel's face twisted to a rictus snarl, teeth like needles, after this day. 

"Stop that!" Sam snarled. 

The monster raised its eyebrows, and made an unhappy, uncertain sound. It stepped back, and stepped back, retreating and transforming back to its black pony shape, which shivered and stood tail tucked down as Sam glared at it.

He shifted to look at the fight in the sky, just in time to see Gabriel and Michael plunge into the lake.

Except Gabriel pulled up at the last moment and tucked his wings, as absurdly graceful as a swan coming to land on the water.

"I was always cleverer," Gabriel said, in a voice like a fanfare. Sam heard it, and heard the sound of goodbye, regret and missed chances. "Always … trickier."

Michael exhaled, a long moaning deflation. " _Brother…_ "

 

Dean had had enough of the archangels whining at each other, and stepped forward to give Michael a piece of his mind.

"You," Dean bit out, "you were wrong, and you know. Man up and take your lumps."

" _We just wanted… Paradise…_ "

"It was not ours," Cas said. "It was never ours. We were always tools, brother, never the work." 

"Also, we have new orders," Gabriel muttered. "Humans are calling the shots now."

" _No..."_

"Sorry, but we've got a genuine Word of God, Michael. Take your lumps and leave it."

The archangel sighed, and to Dean's horror, dissolved like one of Gabriel's illusions, a fading sparkle of red.

"Oh shit..." Dean said.

Gabriel let out an awful trumpeting howl, that had Dean and Claire and Sam covering their ears.

The archangel rose out of the lake like Cthulhu, trailing light and vapor like a radioactive hurricane. He made a snuffling sound for a moment, and then the horse monster that was his Vessel bolted toward the lake from, not a short fake human nor creature pretending to be a black pony at that moment, but something sinuous and fish-scaled, green-black and gorgeous. It ran into the blue-white that poured toward it, as Gabriel dropped _form_ for _light_ , and spiraled into his Vessel like water being sucked down a drain.

The archangel shook himself as he waded out of the water, and slumped against Sam. Dean rolled his eyes and decided he didn't want to know what was going on between them.

Castiel and Anna were slumped down on the ground, Cas on his knees and Anna half-sprawled. The angels were breathing heavy, and looked completely exhausted – which was justified, what with the running battle, insane archangels, horse monsters, and all.

"Hello, Claire."

Claire clutched at Dean's arm, and stuttered a step back. Then she squared her shoulders, and said, "Hello, Castiel."

"Hello, Claire. I'm Anna," the other angel said, as she rolled into a crouch, and then wobbled to her feet.

"Hi," Claire said, but her eyes flicked back to Cas, and she asked, "Is my dad okay?

Cas tilted his head, and heaved himself to his feet, suddenly looming over the girl. "Yes, Claire, he is well. Though tired – he aided us in the battle today."

Claire smiled. "That's neat… I wasn't any help," her lip trembled, "Michael lied to me…I was stupid…I shouldn't have said 'yes'."

Dean had to nip this in the bud, because Cas was totally clueless what to do with a crying twelve-year old, Anna wasn't much better, and Claire didn't deserve to feel guilty because the second biggest dick with wings used her.

"Claire, sweetheart," Dean told her, "Michael was a lot older than you. He knew what to say to make you say 'yes'. Heck, I almost said 'yes' to him a few times myself."

"But you didn't," Claire said. "I did."

"I had back-up – Cas and Anna, and my brother Sam. You remember him, the Ginormatron over there? You just had your mom, and she's a gutsy lady, but she's not used to fighting monsters, not like me and Sam. It's not you guys fault that you didn't know what to do."

 

This seemed to be the cue for jubilant hugs and/or manly back-slaps, as needed. At least, that's what Dean seemed to decide, since he hugged Sam, back-slapped Cas, and made a move towards Gabriel before getting a death-stare.

Anna cut him off from whatever he was going to do to her by grabbing him and kissing him. Sam started to snort with laughter, except Anna grabbed him and kissed him too, and then he just blushed. Her kiss was nice.

Cas gave them both considering looks, then grabbed Dean, who squawked, and kissed him on the cheek. Sam braced himself for the same, and was a little surprised when Cas tugged him down to kiss Sam on the forehead. It didn't help that Dean had recovered enough to chuckle at that.

"Oh, Sammy, that's—HEY!" Dean yelped.

Sam slapped his hand over his mouth in shock, because Gabriel had grabbed Dean, dipped him, and gave a kiss that should have set him on fire, it was so filthy hot. And might have groped his ass when setting him upright.

Dean sputtered for a moment, and then shrieked – and it was totally a shriek, no matter what Dean would claim later, "Don't ever do that again!" 

Gabriel straightened up with an enormous grin that belied his tired eyes, and caroled, "I don't _have_ to—" 

"Gabriel," Sam cut the archangel off.

Gabriel looked at Sam, cocking his head.

Sam crooked a smile, stepped forward, and leaned down to kiss his archangel.

"Uhm, Sammy?" Dean asked, breaking into Sam's enjoyment of the moment.

"What?" Sam growled, and then noticed what had freaked his brother out.

The sky was full of light – not sunlight, but shimmering pyrotechnics of green and purple and gold. 

"What the—-"

"Dad?" Gabriel whispered.

 

The light in the sky, it was warm. It was good. It was … love. 

Sam turned his face to it, and wondered why he had ever feared himself or his life, because if _that_ existed at the end of all roads, he was so happy to go down them.

The angels were frozen, each in their own pillar of light. They looked joyous. 

Their wings were fading, going translucent, and Sam could see patterns and even some form of script beneath the surfaces. He could also see how the blinding joy left no room for him, for Dean, for any human at all in their friends' faces.

"Hey! What the fuck are you doing?!" Dean yelled to the sky.

"Dean, are you arguing with _God_?" Sam yelped. 

"I'm handling this, Sam," Dean said, then turned back to the brilliant sky. "No, _you_ fucked up. What kind of parent makes it so their kids can't do anything without their okay and then fucks off for millennia? You knew they'd go crazy in the meantime! Do you know how many people died because your kids couldn't get it together without you? Do you?!"

Of course he was arguing with God. He was _Dean_. Only he would think that was a good idea. Any normal human would think they'd get themselves smote for that... the angels certainly thought that.

Maybe the rules for angels were different now. Sam hoped the rules for angels were different now. If this was over, and Gabriel wasn't his acid-tongued, trouble-making, darkly hilarious self, it would hurt.

Sam was startled to feel a warm sensation of amused attention, like maple syrup with laughter in it. He frowned, and then felt what felt like a _push_ for lack of better words.

Gabriel's wings were all spread out, fanned open like the pages of a book. A book that was rewriting itself, in fiery letters that twisted and writhed and which Sam couldn't read. But he noticed something – no, was made aware of it – the symbols on Gabriel's inner wings, the ones closest to his body, they were bright and solid, and _not_ changing. 

Sam felt chuckling reassurance, and then something that felt like a question.

"Well, okay then," he said.

He felt the amusement again. Yeah, God was laughing at him.

He smiled when the light died around Castiel, and the angel straightened up and approached Dean. Then Anna was freed, and then Gabriel, who stumbled with a dazed look on his face, and all but fell on Sam.

"Hey there," Sam said, catching Gabriel under the elbows and helping him steady himself.

"Hi..." Gabriel drawled.

"Gabriel," Castiel cut in, the angel's tone freezing Sam's blood.

"Just do it," Gabriel sighed as he dropped his head against Sam's chest. His wings snapped out in their ghostly liquid layers.

Sam gasped as Anna kicked Gabriel in the knee, driving down him to curl on the ground, and stepped on his wing edge as she bent down and pulled one of his primary feathers tight with her hand. A slice of her sword, and half the feather was melting into nothingness on the ground. Naya'il, Lailah, Joelle, Ridwan, and Achaziah were suddenly there to join in, each pinning a wing with their foot and drawing their blades.

They weren't pinioning him; they weren't! Sam bellowed, and rushed towards where the angels crouched over Gabriel, slicing bloody swaths along his wings.

"Is this _mercy_?" Sam yelled, staring at the angels assaulting one of their own.

"No, Sam," Castiel said, his eyes ocean-deep and filled with grief. "This is Judgment."

"Would you please just get it over with?" Gabriel hissed.

Anna looked up at Sam; her eyes were full of tears, even though her face was splattered with Gabriel's blood. She turned and leaned towards the archangel, drawing her fingers down his cheek. He grabbed her hand before she could withdraw it, and pressed a kiss to the back of it.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Dean barked from behind them. He'd been over talking to some the hunters who'd made it through, reassuring them that things were over now. "You'd better have a good explanation, Cas!"

Castiel turned to stare at Dean. "Gabriel abandoned his responsibilities, Dean. That cannot remain unpunished." The angel's eyes flickered down to his brother, then back up to Dean. "No matter how much we might wish it."

"How many?" Dean snapped. "How many of his feathers are you going to cut?"

"All of his primaries," Anna said, pulling another of the enormous feathers taut to slice it away.

Sam winced at the motion and grabbed at Gabriel's wrists, trying to offer what comfort he could. He couldn't risk giving Gabriel his hands, because the archangel could crush them against the pain, and would not even realize it until Sam screamed.

It was some of the worst minutes of his life; Sam couldn't stop the angels, and Gabriel wouldn't want him to. The worst of it was how Gabriel just accepted that being stripped of his flight feathers – and Sam was sure that's not all they were, because angels were as much metaphor as matter – was just and right. Sam could feel the tension in his hands through the ordeal, every reflexive gasp, twitch, and shift as one of the angels cut too high or put a foot down painfully. 

Then the angels pulled off, and Sam had a wounded archangel in his lap. 

 

Claire was walking up the drive, hand in hand with an angel. Claire had an unfamiliar jacket over her own clothes. The angel wore armor, a sword, and Jimmy's body.

"Claire! Oh god, Claire!"

"Fear not, Amelia Novak. I bring good news. The veil is lifted, the war is over, and you are all redeemed."

Good news, Amelia thought, would be her husband come home and the angel gone. But she wasn't going to get that, because she had learned the hard way that Heaven was ruthless and Hell was worse.

But then the angel tilted her husband's head, and smiled at her – not her Jimmy's smile, thank … well, not God, she believed, oh she believed, but she'd found it hard to _love_ in recent years – and the angel said, "You are well-loved, Amelia Novak, and you are forgiven."

It stared at her for a moment, and then its eyes rolled up and it fell forward on its knees, collapsing like a dropped marionette. Amelia stared at the angel, and clutched Claire close.

 

Gabriel drove exactly like you'd expect from someone who was functionally indestructible – jackrabbit starts, weaving in and out of traffic, and a general obnoxious disregard for the laws of physics.

Dean would never have allowed it, but he was laid out in the back seat, sleeping the sleep of the wrecked and exhausted. Sam wouldn't have allowed it either, but his arms and shoulders were taffy, and he couldn't hold the steering wheel with any strength at all. And when he'd asked Gabriel why the archangel didn't just teleport them to Bobby's, he'd gotten "wings clipped, remember?" 

Which he did, since it was hard to forget a celestial being wrapping his tattered limbs around you and bawling, especially when he'd more or less been in your lap at the time.

"Are you alright?"

Gabriel gave a sideways glance and snorted. "I've had my being rewritten and my wings clipped. Do you think I'm all right?"

"I wish that hadn't happened," Sam flinched. "I wish...I wish I could have stopped them," he said uselessly.

"Did you want me to Fall instead?"

"What? No!"

Gabriel nodded, and turned back to pay attention to traffic, "Okay, then."

FINIS


End file.
